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This weekend - October 1

Twenty LA area museums, large and small, are opening their doors for free as part of the second annual Museums Free-For-All. Check out the full list here.

This Weekend - September 23 + 24

I love me a festival. This weekend there are two to choose from:

Los Angeles Korean Festival
This is the 33rd year of the LA Korean Festival, and though I've lived in LA my whole life, somehow I've never been. You can bet I'm going change that this year. Korean food (yum), a market fair, music, carnival rides and a parade on Sunday - sounds like fun for the whole family.

Seoul International Park at 3250 San Marino St. in Koreatown. Thursday - Sunday beginning at 11am daily.

San Gennaro Festival
Celebrate Italian culture through food, music and carnival games at the 5th Annual San Gennaro Festival.

1651 Highland Ave. behind "Jimmy Kimmel Live" Studio on Hawthorn. $5 donation. Friday - Sunday from 10am - 11pm.

Upromise

Upromise has always seemed a little cheesy to me. A loyalty marketing program dressed up as a savings vehicle for college, the basic idea is that by purchasing the right brand of toilet paper, pretzels or juice, you'll be saving a few pennies at a time towards your mini's college education. Now that I have a mini, I still think it's cheesy but signed up for it anyway. I figure the $1.36 or so I earn every month will probably buy her a semester's worth of books or maybe some software by the time she gets to college. But what the hell, it's free and outside of steering me towards certain products, there's no hassle.

Mustard Seed Cafe

Across the street from that little corner of West Hollywood in Los Feliz, the Alcove, is the quiet and very family friendly Mustard Seed Cafe. A small restaurant with only a few tables inside and out, it has a large menu of good old fashioned breakfasts, turkey burgers, sandwichs and huge salads. The waitstaff is friendly and laid back - they never seem bugged by your kid or the fact they just dumped a bunch of snacks on the floor. The vibe here is definitely relaxed - a great little neighborhood restaurant.

Mustard Seed Cafe is located at 1948 Hillhurst at Clarissa in Los Feliz.

This Weekend - September 9 + 10

Now, I'm not sure how a neighborhood in Pico-Union became the 'Latino-Byzantine Quarter' seeing as the only Byzantine aka Greek thing around there is St Sophia's Cathedral, but I'm willing to find out this weekend at the LA Greek Fest. I've never been, but it looks like they have all you need for a successful festival: food, music, dancing and a random assortment of booths.

Adult admission $3 with $1 off if you print out the coupon from the website; children 12 and under are free. The festival is at St Sophia's Cathedral, 1324 South Normandie in Los Angeles. Check website for hours.

Thank you Oxiclean

Maybe it has something to do with my laid back parenting style or maybe it has to do with my subpar laundry skills (would it have killed my mother to have taught me the finer points of stain removal?), but either way my kid's clothes are always stained. My usual technique is Plausible Deniability. Does that stain look like it could have happened on the way to playdate or will it get lost in all the new stains that are going to happen once we get there? But in an effort to be a Great Mother, I've really been trying to master this whole laundry thing. Recently, I found another tool in the never-ending struggle for clean clothes: Oxiclean Baby.

Now I don't know if Oxiclean Baby is really any different from Oxiclean. I don't even really know what it is, but lame informercials aside, this stuff really does seem to work. Just this weekend Baby Girl got some chocolate ice cream on her tshirt. Now in my neighborhood, giving refined sugar or ice cream to a child her age is just not done - I had to get rid of the evidence if she was ever going to wear that shirt in public again. Put it in the Oxiclean Baby for a couple of hours and voila, no stain. We have a clean shirt and our little secret is safe.

Family Nature Walks

The Children's Nature Institute is a volunteer group that leads kid-paced walks for minis 8 and under. The idea is to teach young children about plants and animals and how to treat nature respectfully. You can learn more and sign up for walks on their website.