So when is the Museum of Modern Art going to open up a Birthday Balloon exhibit?

Having waited in line at numerous family festivals and kids fairs to spend 15 seconds with a balloon-twisting clown, I know the magnetism that animal balloons have for little children.  Heck, why bring age into it? I’m blown away by how a thin latex tube can instantly be transformed into giraffes, lions, party hats, etc.

In case you missed it, I highly recommend that you check out the movie trailer for “TWISTED: A Balloonamentary,” which highlights some of the world’s most creative balloon artists.  Forget one-balloon creations. These ambitious folks have created balloon suits of armor for themselves and even made a balloon lounge chair that will support the weight of the average adult:

If you like this stuff, you’ll LOVE WallCandy’s Dog Balloon Wall Stickers for birthdays or just for overall playroom or bedroom decor when you want to add a splash to a boring plain wall.

As our clever marketing copywriters suggest (hey I can’t take credit for this), these doggies will provide you with “commitment-free cuteness.”  That’s right, all the fun and pleasure of owning a dog without having to worry what time you get home to let it out of the house.  No messy clean-ups. No “accidents” on the new rug or scratched furniture.  And no expensive food or vet bills.

Of course, I jest.

No hard feelings, dog lovers — I know in my heart that Dog Balloons will merely enhance your love for those precious pups and can never replace them.

Balloons that will never ever pop!

Speaking of dog lovers, if you’re not one of the more than 6.65 million people who have seen “The Bark Side,” the new Volkswagen doggie tribute to Star Wars, you absolutely must!  There’s a fantastic Internet parlor game going on to see if you can match the correct breed of dog with the right Star Wars character.

Darth Vader, Princess Leia and Chewbacca are obvious, but can you name the alter-egos of the rest of these cute pups?

December’s end calls for positive thinking. As the holiday tunes disappear from your local radio stations, visiting family members and friends return home to their busy schedules, and your trees and wreaths transition from living room to compost heap, it’s important to do what it takes to stay healthy and happy. We find the post-holiday season especially challenging because our everyday environments go directly from decorative and warm to dull and chilly. Blech.

Still, a new year inspires new goals and brings new possibilities. It also just happens to be the best time for introducing new wall decal designs for decorating your favorite spaces new and old. January might not always measure up to December’s merry frenzy, but reflection eventually leads to invigoration and making cheerful changes to our personal spaces is still as simple as peeling and sticking. Get started with six easy-to-keep resolutions inspired by our newest wall decal designs:

Explore at least one new city. No matter where you’d like to take your first-time-ever trip, you need only make a plan to get started. While you’re dreaming of corner bistros and sidewalk shopping, build your own bustling dream destination with repositionable city wall decals (shown above) that can spike a nursery, playroom, or bathroom with instant activity. Should you decide to relocate your cityscape, these removable, reusable wall stickers won’t leave shadows or smudges on your surfaces.

Start a family game night. As the old adage says, “The family that plays together stays together.” Not that the absence of a family game night is a devastating breach between parents and kids, but it sure can’t hurt to spend a few evenings every month playing classic board games or creating your own kind of tournament with French Bull’s cupcake wall decal game. This dynamic kit contains over 50 adorable wall decals you can use to design and redesign your family’s favorite new game.

Spark your own unique brand of creativity. If traditional creative pursuits such as taking a photography course or starting a novel don’t appeal to you, find a project that speaks to your style and let go of any self-imposed limitations. Imagine what the world was like before someone decided to dabble in the art form known as balloon twisting. We’re guessing things were slightly bleaker, which is why we’ve been working on a decorative wall sticker kit to encourage extraordinary art. These removable, reusable dog balloon wall stickers are a nod to all things creative, not to mention cute, cuddly, and static-free.

Love, love, and love some more. Get a jumpstart on your Valentine’s Day décor and design a wall to remind you that love is free and exists in many forms, shapes, and colors all year long. Add removable, rearrangeable overlapping heart wall decals to your daily landscape and let the abundance of brilliant hearts influence your priorities every time you pass through the room.

Remind yourself there’s much more to come. The newest addition to our family of patented chalkboard wall decals is full of jungle flair. Add a wild chalkboard jungle to your kitchen, home office, or playroom walls and use the included colored chalk to create to-do lists, jot down your official vacation countdown, or schedule a movie night for snuggling with the kids. Should you need a little inspiration to get started on your latest creative project, try designing a line of evening wear to attract sophisticated chicks, elephants, and giraffes.

Plan your next big shindig. Once you’ve got a clear space on your schedule, nail down a day to invite those long-lost cousins, nieces, nephews, and neighbors over for celebrating a birthday or holiday. The newest design in our line of party wall decals is a tea-riffic tea party birthday wall decal kit that begs to be paired with crumpets, cupcakes, and coffee for the grownups. If it’s a Valentine’s Day hug-a-thon you’re hoping to hold, design a background with candy heart wall decals and watch them fall in love.

What are you hoping to accomplish in 2012? Got a specific design project in mind? We’d love to hear about your goals (and maybe lend a hand, if we can). Leave a comment or send an e-mail to hello@wallcandyarts.com.

Photo credit: Ian Barnard

Christmas Day is only two weeks away, but your shopping list isn’t getting any shorter. Between your kids, relatives, friends, and the lucky colleague whose name you picked from the Secret Santa bowl, there are probably still a few handfuls of folks you’d like to surprise with a little something special this year. ‘Tis the season to feel elfish, right?

Giving gets even better when it’s done without breaking your holiday budget. We’ve compiled a quick list of 10 great holiday gifts under $50, which we’ll gladly ship to any of the 48 contiguous states for free until the last day of December. When you give a gift from WallCandy® Arts, you support a small mom-owned-and-operated business that designs products proudly made in the USA with non-toxic, high quality materials that will last for years to come. So, go ahead – shrink your shopping list with universally appealing wall décor from our 10-under-$50 gift guide:

Luv Letters – $6 per letter

Help your coworker claim his cubicle with starry blue stick on letters, provide your family’s patriarch with a proud surname to display on the foyer wall, or personalize your daughter’s bedroom with peel and stick letters in a whimsical bird print.

Superstar Chalkboard – $14

Give your niece a removable, reusable chalkboard star sticker to decorate her bedroom door now (and her dorm room door later). It’s removable and reusable without damaging surfaces, so her parents and future resident advisor won’t have to worry about chips or smudges.

Mini Chalkboard Panels – $18

Redesign your beau’s office space or your son’s pretend workshop to include mini chalkboard decals he can use and reuse to manage his to-do list without damaging that cherished Mets-themed paint job.

Mini Whiteboard Panels – $18

If there’s only one way to show your child’s teacher some thoughtful holiday appreciation, it’s giving him or her a trio of peel and stick dry erase decals for the classroom, kitchen, or home office.

Watch Me Grow – $32

For your family’s littlest growers, a cheerful growth chart wall sticker provides the best way to check vertical progress daily without marking up the walls.

Design Your Own Snowman – $38

For your aunt and uncle’s family, a design-your-own-snowman kit packed with removable, repositionable winter wall decals will encourage them to spend more than a few snowless afternoons sipping hot cocoa and building snow pals indoors.

Rococo Chalkboard – $36

This regal-looking decorative chalkboard decal is gorgeous enough to fit in with your best friend’s posh living room décor and functional enough to provide your dear mother a place for working out her latest recipes.

Chalkboard Heart – $36

No kitchen is complete without a peel and stick chalkboard heart for jotting down phone messages, grocery lists, or love notes. This spacious chalkboard wall decal is the perfect place to write “I adore you” all year long.

Night Lights – $48

Surprise your dear mother with a screened-in porch decked out in glow in the dark wall decals that emit just the right amount of moonlight without electricity or recharging. Each peel and stick strand is removable and reusable, so she can easily transfer her design to the guest bedroom in case visiting grandkids need a little nighttime light.

My Sunshine – $48

Know a nursery or playroom in need of some warmth? This all-in-one sunshine kit comes with a brilliant sun wall decal and the celestial accessories to keep blossoming babies always looking on the bright side.

Need your gifts by Christmas Day? Order with ground shipping by Dec. 16, or with expedited shipping by Dec. 20. We can’t guarantee that orders placed after those dates will arrive in time.

Happy holidays!

One member of our staff likes to invite her young nieces and nephews over for some homemade macaroni and cheese, which they eat while a Frazier Fir from Home Depot unfolds in the living room. After dinner, she helps the kids hang the ornaments and they watch Miracle on 34th Street until their parents return from a night out to reclaim their little ones. Once the kids leave and the silvers, golds, reds, and greens are all in place, she admits to experiencing a twinge of sadness that there’s no more decorating to do until next year.

We know the feeling and it’s exactly what inspired our holiday wall decal kits. Well, that and these five reasons to decorate a December (and maybe a bit of January and February, too) with peel and stick holiday wall decals:

1. It rarely snows on schedule. If only the Snow Miser could save his frosty antics for those long weekends when leaving the house wasn’t on the agenda anyway. And what school break isn’t made sweeter by a few inches of snow in the yard? For days when your hankering for some snow fun is hampered by a clear forecast, a couple of design-your-own-snowman and design-your-own-snow-woman kits can come in handy. Make a batch of hot chocolate, gather the kids, and spend an afternoon designing the kind of snowpeople that never melt and always have sunglasses to match their outfits.

2. Restyling trees and wreaths can get complicated quickly. Most adults don’t mind static, unchanging holiday decorations. They look lovely and require about as much upkeep as a cactus, so even the Queen of Christmas Trim can enjoy her season without adding a whole new list of to-dos to the next 30 days. Kids, however, crave any occasion to change things up, which is why every room they enter looks so different once they’ve left it. Add removable, repositionable build-your-own-snowperson wall stickers to your kitchen or playroom and, voila, you’ve got an interactive holiday decoration that doesn’t ever have to look the same and won’t require a drop of maintenance.

3. You could easily set up that holiday party well before next December rolls around. To create a festive background before the cookies are finished baking, simply add peel and stick holiday wall decals to any room and transform it into a celebration haven. Once the party’s over, remove and reuse them to decorate another room or re-stick them to their original backing and store until your next soiree.

4. Real do-it-yourself gingerbread house kits require throwaway bed sheets and more willpower than most of us can muster. Instead of fighting your inner icing demons and chopping crudités to counter your kids’ inevitable sugar intake, work together to design your own gingerbread house with nearly 150 sugar-free, interchangeable decorations. No mess, no fuss, and no extra calorie intakes required.

5. There is no way you’re spending your winter months repainting. Decorating is all fun and games until you pull those holiday cards down from the doorframe and find chipped paint beneath each piece of tape. Removable, reusable wall decal kits won’t damage surfaces, so you can deck your walls with cheer and never worry about chips or smudges.

What’s your favorite way to decorate for the holidays? Leave a comment or send us an e-mail at hello@wallcandyarts.com.

Maevis the Cat blends right in.

Our way-too-brown room was an accident. We chose a neutral paint color in a delicious coffee hue because we’d planned to replace the living room’s old carpet (also brown, only with sporadic black stains left behind by former tenants) with a newer, bluer version. However, our landlord graciously stepped in and offered to absorb the cost of replacing the carpet apartment-wide, provided we were okay with a neutral Berber of her choosing. We agreed and turned our focus to shopping for blue furniture.

I’ve always liked the way various shades of blue complement a warm coffee color, hence my unwavering commitment to this particular vision. Just as we were getting started browsing furniture stores and catalogs for the perfect living room within our budget, a friend offered us a perfectly good set as a placeholder. We happily accepted a camel-colored couch and matching chair, and it wasn’t until we’d settled in to watch a stretch of Boardwalk Empire episodes that I noticed how much our living room resembled a desert on a dreary day.

The truth is, we like our second-hand couch and chair. They’re cozy and clean, wide enough to support two people and a squirrely cat, and much too new to recycle. Sure, we could search far and wide for a set of navy blue covers, but I can’t help thinking that our brown wall is the glue holding this sandy scene together. We could choose another solid color and repaint, but my personal interior painter has declared that painting season is a pain and therefore over for the year. That’s fine; I’m thinking that only blue and white stripes will do.

A Photoshopped "after" photo

Lucky for me, WallCandy® makes removable wallpaper in designs just right for breaking up a too-brown room. It’s reusable and requires not a stitch of glue or primer, so I can peel it away from its backing and apply it right over any of our brown walls without risking damage. My plan to add the blue and cream striped removable wallpaper to my living room begins with some simple planning. Once I know how much space I’ll need to cover – in this case, one main focal wall separating our kitchen and living room – I’ll use my official wall measurements to choose between a full or half kit.

Suddenly, my furniture’s spot at the top of my decorating to-do list is looking loose. Now that I’m revamping a dullish central space in our home with brightly striped removable wallpaper, I’d rather shop for nautical throw pillows, a plush blanket in lobster red, and textured lampshades that exude warm sunset colors. Now, doesn’t that sound like a plan?

Got a monochromatic room you’d love to redo? We love a challenge! Leave a comment or send an e-mail to hello@wallcandyarts.com and share your story.

Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black star in "The Big Year," the first comedy probing into the subculture of competitive birdwatching.

I love the premise of “The Big Year” starring three A-List comedians exploring the friendly rivalry between professional birdwatchers. Who knew there was such a thing?

I’m hoping this movie does for power-birdwatching what Christopher Guest’s “Best in Show” did for the famous Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden, at which different breeds inexplicably compete with one another for top honors. Sorry, but how can you compare a German shepherd and a beagle?

In a very cool crossover promotion, the National Audubon Society has a special interactive slideshow teaching about the birds in the movie. Not ones to sit on their wings, the Audubon gang also recently released a quirky social media game, “Birding The Net,” that encourages kids to — gasp! — go outside.

But there’s another place that’s equally fun to go birdwatching, and that would be the bright blue removable wall decal skies of WallCandy. Oh, from our Summer Clouds and Rainbow temporary peel-and-stick wallpaper to our Forest Friends and Sweet Dreams Fairies classic wall stickers, there is plenty of space to fly around!

Just click on the pics below for more information on some of our Winged Wall Friends who’ll capture your imagination:

Nightly News Owl wall decals.

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B is for Bird: Also check out our other 25 favorite "luv letters" of the alphabet!

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Butterflies in the WallCandy world are called "Flutterflies!"

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What are some of your favorite family-friendly films? We’d love to hear from you on our Facebook page!

And speaking of films, when is the competitive wall decoration enthusiast movie coming out?

SIMPLE SMILE -- Harkening back to the era when pumpkin carving didn't require lasers! (Click the picture to discover the mess-free pumpkin alternative).

When I was a kid, there were no “Pumpkin Carving Kits,” just Dad, a steak knife and a black Magic Marker.

We were thrilled with cutting out triangles and circles and almost always gave our Jack-O-Lanterns poor dental habits — letting them have three teeth at the very most!

These days, the artistic stakes and expectations are much higher — as carvers are using specialized tools and stencils to bring these gourds to life.

Check out the Barack Obama and Simon Cowell designs created by British pumpkin farmer David Finkle, who was featured in the UK Daily Mail:

From the White House to The X Factor -- Who gets more people to vote, Barack Obama or Simon Cowell? (Source: Cavendish Press)

The subtleties of shading are achieved when the artist scrapes off the dark orange pumpkin skin and gets into the light orange meat instead of the traditional method of slicing and dicing through to the core.

If you want to get really fancy with the pop culture references, the celebrity gossip site TMZ offers free stencil downloads allowing you to decorate your doorstep with characters such as Madonna, Steve Jobs, Charlie Sheen, Chaz Bono, Betty White, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.

Cute, but I’m still a Halloween purist and prefer traditional geometry when I make my cuts with my children.

Large peel-and-stick removable Halloween wall decals with interchangeable faces! (Click the pic for more details).

Which is why I am delighted to share WallCandy’s new Halloween Wall Stickers that represent pumpkins of every body type!

This removable wall decal kit taps into every child’s core desire to make funny faces — and it comes without the need of knifes, metal scoops or scrapers.

With these removable, restickable, repositionable pumpkin face stickers, there’s no such thing as a mistake. You can turn your Halloween friends from happy to puzzled to surprised in an instant. Try doing that with the 25-pounder on your doorstep. No candles to burn your little ones’ hands or batteries draining energy.

We’re not suggesting that Halloween Wall Decals totally replace traditional pumpkins. I still have fond memories of squishing out the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin guts and goo and shooting them (squeeze slippery ones between your thumb and forefinger) at my younger brother.  But these removable wall decorations won’t wilt or rot a few days after your sugar high comes down.

What are your favorite pumpkin creations of all time?  Please show us your Jack-O-Lanterns and Halloween costumes on the WallCandy Facebook page!

Knowing when to decorate for fall is a bit more complicated. Letting go of summer and its precious barbecues, baseball season, and stroll-worthy sidewalk sales can feel bittersweet, simply because there’s no season quite like summer for nine months each year. Thank heavens autumn provides such a lovely transition filled with pies, pumpkins, and a multitude of reasons to wear gauzy scarves. If decorating for fall is on your list this week, start by carefully storing your warm-weather things and sweeping the summer sand and spiderwebs from your house’s crevices. Once your template is nice and blank, surround yourself with décor that pays homage to autumn’s favorite attributes.

1. Settling into a new school year

Now that September has passed and your child’s teacher can match those cute little faces to his or her classroom roster, it’s necessary to keep your kids pumped about school until their first holiday break. Instead of fussing over undone homework and an abundance of time spent in front of the television, ask your kids to take control over their own to-do lists and promote the lifelong joy of finishing work to make room for play. Add a desk to your son or daughter’s workspace and use reusable, removable chalkboard wall decals to show him or her how to list and check off assignments, practice calculating math problems in preparation for test day, and prioritize the steps toward completing school projects. Should your child ever decide to rearrange the room or move upstairs once a sibling has gone off to college, simply unstick the chalkboard wall stickers and restick where needed.

2. Camping

Fall brings ideal camping weather – it’s not too hot or too cold, and the bugs are packed up and heading underground for their own unique holidays. If you can’t make it up to Lake Lovelylake for the weekend, try your own backyard, or better yet, a makeshift tent city in your very own home. To recreate a dusky campground atmosphere, hang reusable glow in the dark wall decals just above the nearest window and assign each child his or her own battery-operated lantern. Make parent-supervised s’mores on the stovetop without worrying about mixing open flames with volatile pillow fights. As long as there’s warm snuggles and recreated starlight, it doesn’t matter where you are – those camping memories will stick.

3. Halloween

Odds are, your kids have already chosen their costumes for this year (or narrowed the list down to a mere 20 possibilities). You might have already carved a pumpkin and chosen your house’s official candy giveaway, too. One of many jobs parents assume during the month of October is keeping the kids from exhausting their excitement too soon, which is why we created a peel and stick Halloween wall décor kit with unlimited pumpkin-designing potential. Instead, put the knives away and spend those impatient afternoons going nuts creating jack-o’-lanterns, arranging bats, and dreaming of a candy corn rainstorm. Our wall stickers kit is removable and reusable, so you could always volunteer to transfer it to your child’s classroom and win some points with an equally overextended teacher.

4. Local leaf-peeping

If you don’t have time to head toward Maine before the oranges and reds turn to browns and darker browns, fear not – most towns can boast some nice fall foliage, even if it doesn’t quite qualify as a tourist attraction. Autumn is the best time to don a light jacket and plan a nice family stroll for an afternoon of tree-gazing and deer-spying. If your kids need help getting in the mood, decorate their bedrooms and playrooms with removable deer wall decals in vibrant colors. Designing an homage to nature with reusable wall stickers is so incredibly easy, the kids could give you a hand as you spruce up their spaces.

5. Thanksgiving

If you’re planning to host Thanksgiving dinner, now’s the time to get that kitchen redecorating project underway. Pick out a paint color, hit the hardware store, and consider creating a fall-tastic focal wall that complements your chosen color. One of the easiest ways to accomplish instant décor is by adding removable peel and stick wallpaper to one wall. Depending on the size and shape of your designated space and whether or not you’ll need to trim out squares for letting electrical sockets show, you could add some serious cute to your kitchen or dining area before lunchtime. If only the holiday menu were so easy…

What’s your family’s favorite autumn activity? How do you like to decorate your home for a positively fabulous fall season? Leave a comment and tell us about it!

Today marks the official beginning of autumn, which happens to be the official season for nature’s best blushing bounty, the apples.

In a previous post, we tooted our metaphorical horn in favor of the apple’s steadfast position as one of the healthiest, fiber-filled fruits around (and our apple chalkboard wall decal‘s usefulness when organizing a few of the apple-inspired items on your family’s autumn agenda). Everyone knows that what matters is truly on the inside – especially when it’s fiber and vitamins wrapped in juicy sweetness – but we’re also impressed by the apple’s shape as a classic style icon.

In New York City, the apple’s voluptuousness has provided many painters and sculptors with the space necessary to capture various artistic perspectives of city culture. Jewelry designers, both burgeoning and bigwig, know that apple pendants can either hold boatloads of rhinestones or shine with minimalistic glory as curvy, three-dimensional beauties in static sterling silver or gold. Even certain rappers-turned-fashionaires know that, of all the shapes a gal could want her jeans to create, the apple is one of the most agreeable.

And then there’s our new line of removable, reusable peel and stick wallpaper, which begins with three apple designs in subtle-but-sophisticated colors. To add a touch of fruitful autumn style to any room, be it a child’s playroom or your very own dream kitchen, simply cover one wall with peel and stick wallpaper and create a focal point you’ll enjoy long after the apple orchards are closed up for winter. For a few room-specific ideas, read on.

Cover the blank wall space between your cabinets and the kitchen counter with peel and stick wallpaper patterned with green Granny Smiths set in serene blue. Don’t worry about working around the toaster’s designated electrical socket – simply cover it, mark the area with a pencil, peel away, and trim a precise hole allowing the socket to peek through. Re-stick the reusable wallpaper and smooth with your hand to finish the job. Use any leftover wallpaper to line pantry shelves, turn a narrow connector wall into an apple-tastic accent wall, or provide an adorable background behind the photo collage on the fridge.

Teachers, pediatricians, and farm stand owners, give your home office a dose of effortless flair and design an accent wall decorated with peel and stick wallpaper covered in classic red apples. Whether you’re revamping a tiny professional’s nook or a spacious office-slash-guestroom, you won’t need to spend time slathering on the glue or primer to get the job done. Simply peel, stick, and use the included squeegee tool to smooth each wallpaper sheet. Should you make a mistake, it’s no biggie – just peel away and re-stick once you’ve scouted a better spot.

For a tasteful child’s bedroom decoration, add a peel and stick wallpaper headboard on the wall perpendicular to the bed. Use scissors to create the perfect square or scalloped shape, then stick and re-stick until you’ve designed a perfectly posh bed. If your child has already inherited Grandma’s Chippendale headboard, snip the removable, reusable wallpaper into wide bands and add them to a plain wall in a recurring sequence of stylish stripes. Line bookshelves or bureau drawers with any leftovers.

Got your own peel and stick wallpaper design idea? Tell us about it! Leave a comment or send an e-mail to hello@wallcandyarts.com.

Once Labor Day weekend has passed and the grocery store’s produce aisle becomes a regular apple variety extravaganza, our nostalgia for autumn is at its peak ripeness. We’re even inspired by the apple’s abundant shape, which is one of the many reasons we created our removable, reusable Big Apple chalkboard wall decal. It’s resilient, it’s classic, and it can help you run a flourishing household. There are many ways to use a peel and stick chalkboard, but we’ve narrowed it down to our favorite three in celebration of apple season:

1. Write down a recipe. First, whip up some homemade applesauce to save for garnishing pork chops and making fudgy (and slightly healthier) brownies. Freeze the leftovers for later. Next, make something delectable to reward your staple stockpiling. We suggest this easy apple crisp recipe from Betty Crocker’s online cookbook:

Ingredients

4 medium tart cooking apples, sliced (4 cups)

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats

1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Directions

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease bottom and sides of 8-inch square pan with shortening. Spread apples in pan. In medium bowl, stir remaining ingredients until well-mixed, then sprinkle over apples. Bake about 30 minutes or until topping is golden brown and apples are tender when pierced with a fork. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

(We added oven-toasted pecan pieces to ours for extra crunch and antioxidants.)

2. Plan an apple-picking trip. There are at least nine states that can boast a substantial apple crop every fall. If you live anywhere near Washington, New York, Michigan, California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut, or Massachusetts, you’re a simple brainstorm away from enjoying an apple-picking experience. Choose a nearby orchard, block off an afternoon, and gather the kids. In the days leading up to your family’s apple adventure, jot down the details in chalk to keep track of the plan.

3. Encourage better eating habits. According to the Center for Disease Control’s website on the power of eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, a 6-year-old girl who exercises between 30 to 60 minutes per day should eat a cup and a half of veggies and a cup and half of fruits daily. Use the website’s handy calculator to find out what each member of your family needs and keep track of individual day-to-day fruit and veggie intakes on a chart you’ve doodled on the chalkboard wall decal. Now’s your chance to practice sketching a few adorable asparaguses. (P.S. One small apple counts as a full cup of fruit!)

Where’s your favorite apple-picking spot? What’s your favorite apple-packed dessert recipe? Leave us a comment and share your apple appreciation.