Many of you know that my family has not always lived on Main Street, South. My husband and I both grew up in Massachusetts and though we relocated to Florida right before we got married, we moved back to MA after our first son was born. We then spent some time moving back and forth as we tried to figure out where we wanted to settle down. For about two years, we lived in a tiny apartment in Worcester, MA. During that time, I felt like I was going to go insane, trying to keep a 2 year-old and a 1 year-old happy and entertained. Let’s just say naptime was a very happy time back then. The problem was, getting two kids to nap at the same time, when they shared a room, was next to impossible. What they did do was fall asleep in the car easily. (Something baby #3 has not yet figured out much-but with gas prices, I guess that’s okay.)

To keep my sanity pass the time, I would buckle them both into the mini-van and just DRIVE. One of the many things New England is known for is its scenic roads, so I had plenty of options. Worcester is almost in the center of the state, a little closer to the eastern side, so I could head anywhere and find something beautiful to look at. Of course my very favorite time to take these drives was in the Fall, when the leaves began to turn.

My good friend came from Boston to visit us one day and asked if we wanted to go to the The Quabbin reservoir. I had heard the name but didn’t really know anything about it. It was over an hour to drive there, but I love bodies of water and hills and mountains and sleeping babies, so I was game.

I listened in awe as she told me the tale of the Quabbin reservoir. When Boston and its surrounding cities realized they needed a larger water supply, it was decided that this reservoir would be built in Western Mass, thereby destroying and completely flooding the 4 towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and parts of seven other towns in the process. The town’s houses and buildings were either moved or bulldozed, bodies moved from their grave sites (except those of Native Americans) and the towns were simply no more. Something about that is just so unbelievably eerie yet intriguing. I love strange historical stories like that and there are so many others in Massachusetts, like the Great Boston Molasses Flood and the great Mill River flood (both unplanned) which killed so many.

There is a wonderful stone lookout tower with a huge field surrounding it where the kids liked to run around. When it’s open, you can climb the many stairs (which I’ve done carrying a 25lb baby before) and see parts of the reservoir and all the trees. It is such a beautiful site to see and one of the many things I miss about living within driving distance.

Near where we lived in Worcester there was also the Wachusett reservoir, the second largest body of water in the state (the Quabbin being the first). That one was a much closer drive, and unlike the Quabbin, is surrounded by a main road so you can see the beautiful water views from many angles. Some houses were lost in the flooding to build the Wachusett as well, and the Old Stone Church in West Boylston remains standing as a monument to those houses that were destroyed. I’ve driven by the church on many a nap-drive, and though it always seemed spooky to me, I guess people are always getting married there!

Another place my friend introduced me to (what can I say, I hung out in Harvard Square a lot and didn’t explore much in the state until then!) was the Yankee Candle Factory store. Never heard of it? It is so much more than candles. It is a mecca hidden within the hills and valleys of western Massachusetts. When my friend first described it to me, I thought surely she was joking…a Medieval castle room? A Bavarian Christmas room? A Black Forest room where it snows year round? Audioanimatronics? AND unending bins and displays of candles? As if I needed any more convincing, it also was located at the end of one of the most famous foliage roads in Massachusetts – Route 2.

I fell in LOVE with this place. It’s really busy on the weekends because they get bus loads of tour groups on leaf peeping tours but it’s worth the crowds to me. When we were living there, they had just opened a new Home store which has every imaginable item to decorate your home, after you pick up the candles to match of course!

They also have a restaurant and candle-making museum, a pastry shop and cafe inside the themed candle rooms and an all new children’s program – Wax Works. Now we have to go back to see what that’s like!

One of the best parts of driving along Route 2 out to western MA was the French King Bridge. For one, it was gorgeous with views for miles of the fiery reds, oranges and yellows lining the hills and mountains, and for two, it meant we were almost there! (The Yankee Candle Store was a 3-hour drive from Worcester.) The scenery is absolutely breathtaking and a great place to stop on the side of the road, stretch your legs, and get some amazing photos.

If you ever get the chance to visit more of Massachusetts than the historic Boston area sites, I hope you explore some of these places above. This of course is just a drop in the bucket of all there is to see and do there, but if you have two kids 2 and under and need to drive for a while…you can’t beat these choices! It’s no secret I miss Autumn in New England, so I might share a few other stories of our adventures off the beaten path.

It all started with the party invitation...

When we decided on having our daughter’s 9th birthday party at the movies for a showing of “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” it seemed only right that I’d attempt to make a cake to match – a Spaghetti and Meatballs cake of course!

First, I baked 2 cakes, one 2-layer yellow cake for the base, and a chocolate cake to be crumbled up and turned into ‘meatballs’. Any kind of cake will do, whatever you prefer. The cake balls do not have to be chocolate cake if you are dipping them in chocolate, but if you don’t want to do that step, chocolate cake will look more authentic. Next I made a buttercream frosting for the ‘spaghetti’, topped it with thinned out strawberry preserves for the ‘sauce’ and added ‘grated cheese’ of white chocolate. You can use any recipe you want for the cakes and frosting, whichever you have tried and liked – even box cake!

Once the layer cakes cool, scoop out a little ‘bowl’ shape for the ‘meatballs’ to go in when the cake is frosted. This helps it look more real because real meatballs would sink down into a bowl of spaghetti, not balance on top. A step I missed but would do next time is to also shave down the sides of the cake so it’s more like a hill than a regular cake. That way you don’t have any sharp right angles for the spaghetti to break off on, that happened a lot on my cake.

When mixing the buttercream frosting, I added drops of yellow food coloring and about a tablespoon of cocoa powder to give it real spaghetti color. Just make sure the food coloring and cocoa are fully mixed before you add more, just get it to a color that looks like cooked spaghetti to you. I then lightly frosted the cakes so I didn’t have a ton of brown to cover up with the spaghetti. I also plopped a bit of frosting on the bottom of the pasta bowl I used to hold the cakes, so it wouldn’t slip around. Once that’s done, add the frosting to a pastry bag with a round tip (I used a #3 tip, but would probably go up one size next time) or you can use a plastic bag with the corner cut off. Just keep piping it out in a noodle-like pattern until it looks like a bowl of spaghetti.

Next up are the meatballs! For these I used Bakerella’s famous Cake Balls recipe. I’d never tried them, but friends had and swore by their deliciousness. For these I used an instant cake mix, because that’s what the recipe used and I didn’t want to mess these up. The basic idea is crumbling up the cake into a big bowl, adding a can of frosting, mixing together and forming into balls, chilling, then dipping in melted chocolate and letting harden. Oh my, they are SO good. Now normally I’d take great care in dipping them into the chocolate so they were all pretty like on Bakerella, but since these were meatballs, neatness didn’t count and actually made them look more believable. I just used a pack of chocolate chips, but I would not recommend that again because it wasn’t nearly enough and was really hard to use because it hardened up so quick. My friend said candy melts in the craft store work really well.

Here are the completed meatballs on top of the spaghetti. Just arrange the meatballs however you like. I used a lot, but I knew we’d have a lot of kids at the party and wanted to be sure everyone got a meatball. You can use as few or as many as you want. Just be careful because once you place them, you can’t really move them around, the spaghetti frosting will be crushed. Needs some tomato sauce, yes?

For the sauce, thin out some strawberry preserves with water, heating if needed to stir it up, just be sure to cool it back down before pouring it on the cake, or you’ll melt all that great spaghetti! Of course you don’t have to use sauce at all if you have guests that don’t care for strawberry or other fruit on their cake! I took a risk using it with my kids, but they let it slide this once.

The finishing touch is grating some Parmesan cheese – made out of whit chocolate of course – on top of your creation. This is the final detail that really adds to the look of real spaghetti & meatballs. My daughter really wondered if I’d ruined her cake by adding actual cheese to it!

We got some crazy looks walking into the movie theatre with a giant bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. I told my husband we should’ve announced “We’re here for the Pot Luck!” The person in charge of our party actually said – “what IS that?” I guess curiosity got the better of her wondering why people would bring hot food to a kids birthday party in a movie theatre. Once she found out it was a cake, she thought it was hilarious.

The cake also received the 9-10 year-old seal of approval and they all thought it was the coolest thing ever to be able to eat dinner for dessert. It really wasn’t too hard to make, I’d recommend it to anyone that wants a unique spin on a traditional birthday cake. The reaction is definitely worth it!! Oh! And the movie was really great too – really funny, great 3-D effects. Steve the Monkey (voiced by The NPH) steals the show.

the birthday girl seal of approval!

Welcome!

While experiencing the great joy of creating and writing my Disney blog, ZannaLand, I felt it only natural to branch out into a personal blog. It’s what I originally intended to do at the beginning of 2009, but fate decided to sprinkle some pixie dust onto that idea, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wanted to share some more personal anecdotes from non-Disney happenings in my family’s lives as well. What better place to share all things family and home-related than Main Street, USA, right?

I chose the title because when I was a Cast Member at Walt Disney World back in 1995, I had the pleasure of working on Main Street. I was there right as Main St. Athletic Club was opening up in the former Penny Arcade and Magic Shop areas. I switched between Main St. Athletic Club, Disney Clothiers and later Uptown Jewelers. I have some magical memories from that time – one favorite was standing in the doorways each night as everyone watched the SpectroMagic parade travel down Main Street. Another was walking down the street itself after the park had closed, looking up at the Castle all lit up, music still playing…it was truly magical. So whenever I think of Main Street, I think of my time there and the wonderful family feelings I experienced.

Here I’ll share my own little slice of Main Street, with stories, pictures and memories of my family and friends. This will also be the spot where I share reviews and host giveaways for some wonderful products that may come my way. I hope you enjoy your stay here and come visit as often as you like – new friends are always welcome in the neighborhood!

In typical Zanna fashion, I started full-force on this website and blog at the least financially…um…fit moment of the year so far. While we are working on correcting that and battling the economic woes affecting us all (as a one-income family of 5), of *course* I want want want all these shiny, pretty things I see online. I tend to get very Veruca Salt about things when I start on a new venture. The fact that I am not able to go overboard with my wishes is probably for the best, but I simply have to get it off my chest, hence this entry you are reading now. If nothing else, it will help me keep everything in one place and have a list to tell my family and friends about for my birthday and the holidays!

1. Business cards from Moo.com. About 2 years ago, Moo.com did a cross-promotion with livejournal.com (where I have blogged privately since 2001.) to promote their new company. You could order 10 randomly designed Mini Cards with your livejournal name on them, or whatever you liked (I was not into handing out my lj name so I just got my gmail address on them with “Faith, Trust & Pixie Dust”). Naturally, when I decided to make this place a reality, Moo.com was my first and really only choice to head to for business cards listing the website. They are currently running a 50 free business cards promotion with paid shipping, so I might be able to take advantage of that, but my wish is still for the Mini Cards, because I think they are so unique and unexpected. I also want to get a nice Mini Card holder (in pink of course!) so I can actually take them with me and hand them out.

Geisha Poken

2. A Poken. I will fully admit to this being a luxury item for me. I am not yet a blogger with 100′s of followers, but I am damned determined to get there. I first discovered Poken on Twitter, when many of the bloggers I follow there were discussing their upcoming trips to BlogHer ’09. I googled Poken and fell in love. “HOW CUTE!” I thought. I will also fully admit to having a soft spot for all things Japanese inspired (ironic since they are not Japan-based), whether toys or candy or animation. So the idea of carrying around an adorable miniature creature, and ‘high four’ (Pokens only have 4 fingers) another Poken to instantly exchange contact information? I was sold. It was hard to decide which Poken I coveted most, but I settled on the Geisha. There are a few sites you can purchase Pokens on, a couple of which I’m following on Twitter as well. I can’t wait to be able to Poken with someone soon!

Disney's D23 Membership - look, it's Tink!

3. A Membership to D23, the exclusive Disney-run fan club. I have wanted one of these since it came out, but the planets have not aligned for it to happen yet. I asked for it for Mother’s Day, but I think that was around the time everyone in our family took turns being sick, twice, so it didn’t work out. I have the first issue of the magazine, but the membership is a must-have for a Disney site like mine, purely research purposes of course! Since the waiting list for Club 33 is 18 years now, I figure at least this is attainable!

4. A BIG OL’ Barnes and Noble or Amazon Giftcard. This really IS for research purposes. I’d like to increase my Disney library and brush up on my totally NOT useless trivia, history and stories behind the parks. There are several guidebooks I’d like to have on file as well as many more Disney trivia and history books. In this same vein, a Disney gift card would be fabulous to use for booking tours and other special events for research purposes!

Disney's Princess Netpal computer PINK! and Disney!!!

5. A mini-laptop. I am lucky to actually have a laptop, thanks to a tax return in 2007, but I was a little over-eager and thought the 17″ Dell Inspiron was the only choice for me. I love it, dearly, but when we do travel to Disney or somewhere else it is a bit of a hassle to lug around. We were able to get both kids mini Dell laptops for Christmas last year, and while the keyboards are kind of tough for me to type on, I think they’d be a great investment to be able to stay mobile with ease. Plus Disney just came out with new Princess Netbooks, though if I got a Disney one, I think the kids would stage a mutiny.

I think that’s it for now, short of listing items off my regular amazon wishlist. And that’d just be greedy. Any other ideas for must-haves that I’m missing here? Obviously I’m writing and keeping the site going without these items, but a girl can dream, can’t she? Especially a Princess. Is Genie from Aladdin still around? Maybe he’ll grant me a wish or two…In the meantime, I shall count my non-pressed pennies and save my pixie dust. *:•..•:*¨¨*:•.ºoº.•:*¨¨*:•..•:*

[Edit: originally published on ZannaLand on 7/31/09]

I was recently given the opportunity to try out some EcoStoreUSA products – and BOY was I glad I did. The well-packaged spray cleaner arrived in the mail after a day when cleaning the house had fallen to the bottom of the priority list. With a 9 month old cruising around, that happens every now and then. I was able to jump right in to testing out the Citrus Spray Cleaner because my stove and counters were covered in grease from cooking the night before. I will fully admit to being skeptical – “won’t all-natural mean it won’t work as well?” but I was quickly proven wrong. The citrus spray cut right through the grease and left no streaks. We have a clean-top stove, so streaks show up easily, however not with this spray!

Ok, I thought, let’s give it another tough test…dog stains. We have a Chihuahua. The kids love her, but don’t love walking her, so there are a few accident spots here and there on our light beige carpet. I had been avoiding cleaning those too thinking we’d have to lug out the big carpet shampooer. Nope! I sprayed the Citrus Spray Cleaner and the spots rubbed right out. Seriously, I was shocked. I almost hugged the bottle!

Next up, dried baby food, bananas and cereal on the baby’s high chair. By that time I wasn’t surprised that the cleaner cut right through that caked on mess with ease. In addition to the obvious cleaning ability, it smells great. A lovely citrus scent replaces the harsh chemicals you usually have to endure with other cleaners. I was so pleased with this product it has now become my favorite cleaner. The fact that it isn’t full of “nasty chemicals” as their website states is a wonderful bonus. I always worried about spraying the harsh Mr. Clean I used to use, with the baby nearby. Now those fears are forgotten when I use the Citrus Spray Cleaner. It’s the perfect marriage of effectiveness and feel good results.

I was also given a bottle of the Baby Moisturizer. I tried this out on myself first and loved the scent. It made my elbows so soft and it wasn’t greasy at all. I used it on the baby next and it worked wonderfully as well as making him smell wonderful.

I had received several national brand baby moisturizers as baby shower gifts but was reluctant to use them because you could just smell the chemicals in them. I didn’t want to put them on him and risk a reaction. With this moisturizer, you know what’s in there, you can smell the ingredients from nature, and you feel good about putting it on even the most sensitive skin. We all feel soft and smell delicious around here now!

In order to pass on the news of their wonderful company and products, the good people at have agreed to giveaway a $25 gift certificate to one of my readers! You can use the $25 certificate to purchase anything in their line of products – baby products, hair care, pet care.

EcoStoreUSA Giveaway Entry Information:

There are 4 ways to gain an entry for this giveaway-
1. Comment to this entry telling me why you would love to try EcoStoreUSA products and which ones you’d be interested in trying. (counts as 1 entry)

Optional additional entries:

2. Subscribe to ZannaLand in a reader.

3. Become a fan of ZannaLand on facebook and EcoStoreUSA on facebook. Leave a comment on EcoStore’s facebook page mentioning the ZannaLand giveaway and tell them if you’re excited about their product line. Comment here with the link to your EcoStore comment on facebook. (counts as 1 entry)

4. Add EcoStoreUSA on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway. Link to your tweet (click on your tweet’s timestamp to get the permalink) in a separate comment below. (counts as 1 entry) (you may tweet daily and comment with your tweet links for additional entries!)

Winner will be randomly drawn from received entries by midnight on Wednesday August 5, 2009. Good luck!

EDIT 8/6/09:

CONGRATULATIONS to Bethany, the winner of the $25 gift certificate from EcoStoreUSA! We wrote out names for every entry people submitted and my daughter drew Bethany’s name out of a hat. Thanks for everyone for participating and please be sure to check out EcoStore USA’s products!