A Girl Named PJ

This shop is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group® Pop Secret and Fox Entertainment, but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia  #PopForRio2 http://my-disclosur.es/OBsstV

When your three year old goes to bed before 8pm, family movie night is usually family movie afternoon — or afternoons, plural. Feature-length films are not geared for a toddler’s short attention span, so it frequently takes us two or three sessions to finish a movie.

Still, I like to make a big deal over family movie afternoon so the experience feels like a special treat for Levi. We snuggle together under a blanket on the couch and share a big bowl of microwave popcorn…for about 10 minutes. Then Levi usually slides off the couch, assumes his typical movie-watching position standing behind the coffee table, and requests his portion of popcorn in his own bowl.

Levi has only seen a handful of animated movies, including Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, and, of course, Frozen. (After watching Frozen, I started hearing Levi sing yell, “Let it go! Let it go!” from his room during nap time. So cute!)

One of the next animated movies we’re looking forward to watching as a family is Rio 2. In keeping with the bird theme of the film, I plan to make a “Bird Seed” snack instead of simply serving microwave popcorn straight out of the bag. I’ve been playing around with salty and sweet combinations for our people bird seed — really, popcorn trail mix — and here’s the winning recipe:

Popcorn Trail Mix (aka “Bird Seed” snack)

• Pop-Secret popcorn
• Dried cranberries
• Chocolate chips
• Chow mein noodles

Popcorn offers a light and airy base for the additional “bird-friendly” ingredients — chewy “beak-friendly” dried fruit, melty “mud” chips, and crunchy “twig” noodles. The beauty of trail mix is that you can determine the ratio of ingredients…and which ingredients to include. For example, you could swap the chocolate chips for peanut butter chips and the chow mein noodles for pretzel sticks.

What would you include in your popcorn trail mix?

Bonus! If you head to Walmart to pick up your copy of Rio 2 and a box of microwave popcorn to make trail mix, you can save $1 off any Pop-Secret popcorn while supplies last.

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