Christmas gift idea

Red Envelope Picture Frame, Baby Products, Treasured Memories #giveaway

November 11, 2009 By Momstart 651 Comments

Red Envelope offers unique and personalized gifts for every occasion. They have jewelry to centerpieces to holiday treats. And they have one of the cutest line of Baby Gifts that I’ve ever scene. The baby gifts are so cute and look wonderful, but I wanted to capture something that would keep my memories for me.Red Envelope is a company specializing in memories. Be that, baby memories, photo memories or just lifetime memories they have it.

Take this frame for instance, Red Envelope sent me this frame for me to review. I love photos and I love colors. The bright colors are a perfect combination with all of the colors in the photos of the kids. I’m very excited about this review opportunity. Any time I get the chance to pick out photos for a frame is a ton of fun on my part.

Kaleidoscope Wall Frame

Our wall gallery frame features a kaleidoscope of colors while making it easy to create an instant photo gallery. Capture all of the little one’s new firsts – first steps, first finger paintings, the first day of school. Suspended from a single white wall bracket, five frames hold a total of eight images. Optional plaque may be personalized with two lines of up to 15 characters each. Exclusively from RedEnvelope.

The Holiday Gifts Look Great too. The quality of the frae is ecellent so I can only imagine that the rest of the products are too. I’m also partial to a company that has a very nicely organized easy to use website.

They have offered one 75.00 Gift Card to their on-line store.

To Enter:

Visit Red Envelope and come back and tell us in the comments what you would purchase with your 75.00.

Extra Entries:

Advertise this giveaway on any giveaway site and tell me where you advertised it. 10 Extra Entries
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Tweet the giveaway (every time you tweet you get an entry) Link to the giveaway please!!!
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Things Remembered Christmas Gift Ideas #giveaway

October 31, 2009 By Momstart 202 Comments

Things Remembered gave me a necklace for mother’s day and I was very excited about it. I have worn it every day since then.

Recently Things Remembered has provided me with a gift guide for Christmas. Here are the options:

-Max the “Make-A-Wish” Bear – Household budgets may be stretched, but consumers still want to support charitable organizations and give really great gifts. Now they can do both! Things Remembered celebrates its 12-year partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation with five exclusive gifts benefitting the Foundation, including Max, a fluffy white teddy bear. Max holds a delicate water globe in his paws with a message that reads “Wishes from the Heart.” A story card explains how Max brings and shares wishes with others. For every Make-A-Wish product sold, $2 will be donated back to the Foundation. View a photo of Max and all the Make-A-Wish gifts at .

-Custom Couture Jewelry Collection – A new custom accessory! Gift givers first choose a bracelet or necklace in one of five designs, including a pearl or beaded chain. Then they add one of three engravable pendants and finish the accessory with a miniature, sparkling birthstone pendant, initial pendant with pearl accent, and/or one of six miniature charms, including a star, angel, cross, heart, butterfly or key. One sheet explaining the line attached.

-Push USB Drive – Personalized USB drives were among Things Remembered’s best sellers last holiday season. This year there’s a new kid on the block – a silver-plated and black matte key chain featuring a sleek, push-out USB drive that holds up to one gig of information without taking up a lot of physical space. Great for guys!

-Race Car Water Globe – Great for little boys, this water globe is shaped like a race car and doubles as a toy with its movable wheels. A water globe sits atop the driver’s seat and houses a photo of your little guy to make it look like he’s driving the car. The metallic silver body is accented with blue tints and racing stripes.

They sent me a Race Car Water Globe and it is really nice. My husband helped me decide that it would be a waste for us to keep it and I was prepared for this option. I knew it was going to be nice and my kids aren’t ready for “nice”. They are just too young. I had it inscribed with “May Your Path Always be Straight and True”. So we are going to donate this car. The Race Car Water Globe holds a photo. It’s so easy to get the ship inside the glass, if you know what I mean. the photo frame comes out in the bottom and you insert your photo of choice instead of the old one. The car wheels move and it would roll but it’s so nice I wouldn’t want you to roll it.

Things Remembered is offering one to one of my readers. (as long as supplies last, otherwise you will receive something of equal value)

To Enter:

Visit Things Remembered and tell me what you like other than the gift guide above.

And Or

Become a follower of Things Remembered on twitter

And or

Become a fan of Things Remembered on Facebook

Extra Entries:

Advertise this giveaway on any giveaway site and tell me where you advertised it. 10 Extra Entries
Subscribe to my blog
Follow me on twitter tell me your twitter ID
Blog about the giveaway include a link to me and to the sponsor for 10 extra entries
Tweet the giveaway (every time you tweet you get an entry) Link to the giveaway please!!!
Comment on any other non giveaway post and come back and tell me you did
Use any of the Share options at the bottom of this post: Dig, Stumble, or fav me on Technorati (two entries for each one)
Add my button/blog to your blogroll/friend list 3 extra entries
You can vote for me too for five entries:

Big Brain Puzzle Book Review/Donation and #Giveaway

October 28, 2009 By Momstart 193 Comments

THE BIG BRAIN PUZZLE BOOK is available wherever books are sold and will aid the Alzheimer’s Association in its mission to promote brain health.

Alzheimer’s Association Presents The Big Brain Puzzle Book (Alzheimers Association)

Awareness helps with most diseases in identifying the onset and most diseases are easy to cure or you can slow down the effects if you catch them early. Knowing the 10 Warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease is vital to being diagnosed early and receiving the best help and care possible.

The Big Brain Puzzle Book is filled with brainteasers and puzzles created by internationally-syndicated puzzle writer, Terry Stickels. Terry is well known for his three columns: “Frame Games,” published in USA Weekend magazine; “Stickelers,” featured in more than 200 newspapers daily, and he is also a featured puzzle columnist for London’s largest newspaper, The Guardian.

You can actually decrease your chances of developing this progressive and fatal disease (Alzheimer’s) by simply increasing your brain activity with a puzzle book like The Big Brain Puzzle Book. But you can just enjoy it too and not even think of the help you are giving yourself by keeping your mind active. I love brainteasers. I just love them. I love Sudoku and just puzzles. I love mysteries and suspense and my brain is weird. I get a huge high by solving things. Even just how to pack a box, or suitcase is exciting to me.

The puzzle book is categorized into three progressive levels:

Level 1 – Basic logic reasoning, visual and wordplay games will help kick start neurons. Frame games, like descrambling the letters “Hsilgne” to make “Shingle,” are found throughout this section.

Level 2 – Readers are encouraged to work through more challenging puzzles with friends and family. This section incorporates out-of-the-box trivia questions like knowing which state besides Missouri is bordered by eight states.

Level 3 – Complete higher level mathematical equations, wordplay and spatial and logical reasoning games. Advanced exercises, like finding the next fraction in a sequence and mind-bending word problems, come into play.

About the Alzheimer’s Association & Terry Stickels:

The Alzheimer’s Association is the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer care, support and research. Our mission is to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research, to provide and enhance care and support for all affected, and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health. Our vision is a world without Alzheimer’s. For more information, visit http://www.alz.org/.

I was sent a copy of this book to review and I have looked at it and played with it in my head and now I am going to donate it. I think it will make a great Christmas Present and that’s why it has made my Christmas guide.

I also have one to giveaway:

To Enter:

Tell me your favorite type of puzzle.

And Or

Follow Book Brainy on Twitter

Extra Entries:

Advertise this giveaway on any giveaway site and tell me where you advertised it. 10 Extra Entries
Subscribe to my blog
Follow me on twitter tell me your twitter ID
Blog about the giveaway include a link to me and to the sponsor for 10 extra entries
Tweet the giveaway (every time you tweet you get an entry) Link to the giveaway please!!!
Comment on any other non giveaway post and come back and tell me you did
Use any of the Share options at the bottom of this post: Dig, Stumble, or fav me on Technorati (two entries for each one)
Add my button/blog to your blogroll/friend list 3 extra entries
You can vote for me too for five entries:

Sort It Out Family Game Review and Donation by University Games

October 17, 2009 By Momstart Leave a Comment

University Games Sort It Out Family Game was sent to my family for review and to donate. I love the box and how it is very family oriented. The game is educational and fun. In my opinion, families need to get back to having a family night away from the TV. My family included! My kids are way too young for this game because it is meant for 12 years and up. I think of it as something like Trivial Pursuit but easier and modern questions. There are even questions about President Obama. I didn’t open the box to actually play it but here is the gist of playtime.

Sort it Out! begins with a simple and becomes addictive and challenging as the game continues. You put lists of things in order, such as events in the 60′s, speed of animals, or number of Oscars won by certain actors. The balance of logic, knowledge, and guessing makes each turn dynamic and often surprising. This makes it more than just knowledge because there’s always a good dose of luck involved. There are definitely obscure questions within Sort it Out!, the need to sequence things makes it a whole different ball game than simply coming up with an answer on your own. Also, every player plays every turn and never has a boring pause between turns. Because it is tricky to get every single list correct, every player has a good chance at earning points at the beginning of every round. Sometimes, players win points out of pure luck. Depending on their position on the board game, players can also move back if they get incorrect answers.

Product Description:

Sort it Out!™ is the game of putting things in order from Australia that’s sweeping across the world. A great icebreaker for groups of new friends and a battle of wits for old; it is a fast paced game where knowing just a little about something can help you win everything!
Example: Sort these animals by the usual number of adult teeth they have:
rabbit
gopher
elephant
dog
bottlenose dolphin
If you said: bottlenose dolphin (76-98), dog (42), rabbit (28), elephant (24), gopher (20)…then you have what it takes to Sort it Out!™!
For 2 – 6 players, ages 12 and up.
Contents: 1 game board, 6 moving pieces, 6 tile holders, 30 colored tiles, over 300 topic cards, 1 sand timer and instructions.

About University Games

Bob Moog and Cris Lehman founded University Games in 1985. The company has added many divisions and broadened our scope a lot since then, but the University Games’ products remain true to the standards set more than 24 years ago. Our games are easy to learn. Start playing in five minutes. Our games keep all players involved, even when it’s not their turn. Our games are different every time you play. Our games combine luck and skill, so every player has a chance to win. Our games make learning fun. Creative gameplay and quality components are our standard, but that’s not all we offer. From prestigious educational licenses like Brain Quest and Eric Carle to exciting entertainment licenses with Big Brain Academy Nintendo Software, LEGO construction toys, the Worst-Case Scenario book series and Anti-Monopoly, we’ve got original ways to have fun. So spend time with us and you can have a great time with the family, get to know the neighbors or even learn how to read.

Filed Under: christmasguide, review Tagged With: Christmas gift idea, family game, Sort it Out, university games

Photo books make excellent gifts

October 8, 2009 By Momstart 6 Comments

Photo Book Blurb is a creative book publishing platform that enables anyone to design, publish, share, and sell affordable, bookstore-quality books.

Product Overview

Blurb’s publishing platform is comprised of three principal components:

1) Free book design and layout software called Blurb Booksmartä. Available for Mac or PC, BookSmart offers a wide variety of page layouts, multiple theme packages, and royalty-free custom illustrations designed by commercial book designers.

2) Free online bookstore complete with an array of marketing tools such as Book Preview, tagging, and Blurb Badges. Blurb customers can make their books available at cost for friends and family or set their own price and retain 100% of the mark-up.

3) Bookstore-quality printing and binding. Books are printed on demand, so there’s no up-front investment – customers pay only when they order copies of their book. Minimum book order quantity is one, and discounts apply starting at 10 copies of the same book in a single order.

Available book formats include:

Square 7×7 inches
Standard Landscape 10×8
Portrait 8×10
Large Format Landscape 13×11

All books except the 13×11 are available in softcover, hardcover with dust jacket, and ImageWrap hardcover, and are printed on high-quality 80-pound paper and feature professional-quality binding. Prices begin at $12.95 per book for Square 7×7 softcover.

How It Works

BookSmart lets anyone create commercial-quality books by dragging and dropping images and adding text to professionally designed page layouts.

BookSmart imports photos and other image files from a computer hard drive, automatically recognizes iPhoto libraries on Macs, and ‘slurps’ images from online photo sharing sites such as Flickr, PhotoBucket, Picasa Web Albums, or SmugMug. Users can place images one at a time or autoflow them to quickly produce a draft book. New slurpers and integrated import functionality are in development. Likewise, BookSmart provides complete text support to create a variety of text-rich books, from travelogues to storybooks to cookbooks. BookSmart autoflows text pasted from other applications, adding pages as necessary, or users can directly type in the page layouts. Authors can use any font installed on their computer and format font size, color, and text styles.

Finally, Blurb’s Blog Slurpers automatically convert blogs to books in minutes. Supported platforms include Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, and WordPress.com. Other platforms will be added in the future.

Online Bookstore and Marketing Tools

Blurb customers can order, share, market, and sell the books they make in Blurb’s free online bookstore. Users may choose to keep a book private, share by invitation only, or sell to the public. Further, Blurb’s Set Your Price program enables Blurb bookmakers to set a retail price higher than the cost, and retain 100% of the markup whenever their book sells.

All Blurb authors automatically get customizable Blurb Badges which can be placed on blogs, Web sites, or in email; when visitors click on the badge they link directly to the book’s detail page in the bookstore to learn more and/or purchase. Additional marketing tools include:

Book description with image of cover
Optional Book Preview
Email announcement
Email It to friends and colleagues
Bookmark It to social bookmark sites

Markets

Blurb is bringing book publishing to the masses by providing an affordable publishing platform that’s accessible to anyone with a broadband connection and modest computing skills. Every family, traveler, photographer, bride, cook, poet, teacher, blogger, and artist has a book inside them waiting to be published, whether to keep, give, or sell at profit.

Increasingly, Blurb is also a popular choice for business and creative professionals who create books to promote products and services. Photographers, business owners, architects, designers, and marketing professionals have unique requirements for integrating books into their business processes, and Blurb’s print-on-demand model, order management, and fulfillment services, online bookstore, and attractive prices are driving significant market adoption in this category.

(all of this information was taken from a press release, I did receive a photo book when I wrote my review a few months back check out my Blurb Photo Book review)