PlanADayOut.com was the brainchild of Maruska Gannon, an Orange County mom who was frustrated trying to find fun things to do with her two kids. She found herself searching dozens of websites each week to find the right activities that fit her family’s time, interests and budget.

So this efficiency-oriented OC mom started creating a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel that housed all the information she needed to plan a day out with her kids. Soon, friends started asking her for advice on where to go and what to do. She realized the need to find things to do was universal and extremely relevant for parents.

And so PlanADayOut.com was born. Working with her computer programmer husband, Maruska put together a searchable, dynamic database that allows users to find the perfect kid-friendly activity given multiple parameters and preferences.

The site launched officially in March 2012 after two months of beta testing with local moms. While the site will continue to evolve and improve based on feedback from local parents, Maruska promises that PlanADayOut.com will always stay true to its commitment to provide a free resource to benefit families and the communities in which they live.

Five quick facts about us:

1. I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in mathematics from UCLA. After I graduated, I was an actuary (a business professional who crunches numbers all day) for a little over 8 years.
2. English is not my first language, as you might have noticed. I speak Italian and so do my kiddos.
3. My husband has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from UCLA and an MBA from UCLA Anderson. We met at the computer lab at UCLA where we both worked. It was almost love at first sight.
4. We are not creative people. The hardest part about this project was making things pretty…and we are still working on that.
5. I am really not a good writer. I originally thought to write 10 facts about us, but I could barely come up with 4. So I stopped here. :)