Mommies With Style

I fondly remember having this amazing book read to me that was personalized with a few facts about me when I was a child. I thought the book was the neatest thing! So when I was sent a book called, “The First Adventures of Incredible You,” for my son, it brought back memories of my favorite childhood book (which I think I have laying around somewhere)! I adore reading The First Adventures of Incredible You to my son and he loves listening to it. The book is fabulous! My son really enjoys hearing about his favorite park, zoo, friends, sports team and more! He gets so excited when we start to read it and proclaims, “my book”!

The First Adventures of Incredible You is a extraordinary hardcover book full of whimsical, full-color illustrations and rhyming text with personalized details about your child. This marvelous keepsake children’s book follows your child from the day they arrived on Earth through the exciting first adventures in life. The book becomes a completely personalized storybook with just a little input from you regarding the people and places that are special to your child. With over 20 places to seamlessly incorporate details about a child and his/her family, friends and family traditions into the text of the award-winning book (even including a special page to incorporate a favorite family dish)! In the front of the book is a dedication page so your child never forgets who gave them this unique keepsake adventure.

This artistic, award-winning personalized storybook is a memorable and super unique gift for new parents! Great for gift giving, if you do not know how the child’s family would fill in the personalized information, there are easy standard options available to choose from or you may order a book gift certificate so that the recipient family may fill in the information themselves! (What a great idea!) Save 15% off your order until December 5, 2009 by entering code mws15 at checkout.

A couple of years ago, I had some bags stolen when I was out shopping on Black Friday.  It was my one and only attempt to ever shop on that day and I swore I’d never do it again.

Thankfully, with online competition and Cyber Monday, there’s really no need for me to brave the crowds anymore.  Folks like LeapFrog are doing deals for both days.  You never have to leave your home when prices like this online!

Starting Black Friday, LeapFrog will be offering 25% off site-wide on all their products through November 30th.  Stock up!  This is a sale you can’t miss.  Get select Leapster games for as little as $5, Tag books for $5.49 and much more!

Can’t wait?  Shop today through Friday and use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to receive 20% off your entire order on the LeapFrog site.  Free shipping on orders over $50.

Disney has launched Disney Digital Books —an interactive reading site.  Because it’s from Disney, it’s got the gorgeous art, beloved characters and familiar stories you’d expect. For $8.95 per month/ $79 a year, you get one parent account/3 child accounts. Children can choose from over 500 new and classic Disney books.
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I am obsessed with photos, albums, archiving it all, and figuring out the best ways to organize it all. I have scrapbooked both traditionally and digitally, have created your good-old regular photo books, and have made online photo books. But recently, I got to try out Shutterfly’s new Simple Path — an amazing and simple way to make a beautiful, organized photo book in minutes. (Literally!)

When I first saw this on Shutterfly’s website, I thought to myself, “how are they going to know how to order my photos and which ones are most important?” But somehow, the site knew, and it organized my photos in the right order (by date) and grouped together (with like photos). The whole process literally took about 10 minutes. I uploaded my photos (about 4 minutes), allowed the program to place them in the book (30 seconds or less), decided on the style of pages (1 minute), and then swapped around a couple pictures and added captions (5 minutes). How simple is that?! The book was ordered and received in record time (a couple of days) and we were all super impressed! High quality photos with bright, vivid colors, a hard, glossy cover customized to my liking (as well as the spine)… it all came together easily to create an awesome product that my whole family is enjoying.

Please, take a few minutes and check out the new Simple Path feature and quickly finish up all of those albums you have been meaning to do for years. You will feel so good when you are done! (One less thing to do, and a beautiful new photo book on your shelf to admire!)

Check out Shutterfly’s special offers, which currently includes a buy one, get one 50% off on photo books. (Offers change all the time, though, so jump when you see a good one!)

We’re huge fans of LeapFrog products in our house and our latest craze has been with the Tag and Tag Junior reading systems. While the Tag books teach everything from reading comprehension and listening to spelling and rhyming, two new sets of books for the Tag will take your kids’ learning even further.

The newly released Tag Learn to Read Phonics series has two collections to choose from – Short Vowels and Long Vowel, Silent E and Y. For $19.99, each set includes 6 separate books that teach vowels sounds, phonics skills, word recognition, and reading basics.  These sets are geared for kids age 4-7 though I can tell you my 3-year-old has loved exploring the books – even if he hasn’t quite grasped vowels yet. These books are a bit shorter than other Tag books, but are still chock full of activities and learning fun.  Plus since they are smaller, they don’t take up as much room on your Tag. (I think I was able to fit all 6 Short Vowel book on plus 4 other regular Tag books.)

Don’t have  Tag reader yet?  Right now at www.leapfrog.com Tag readers have free shipping! The new model ($49.99) includes a larger memory to store 10 books and is also available in pink. Or pick up one of the original size Tag (holds 5 books) for only $39.99.

The latest CD to spin in our car player, What a Ride by Eric Herman and the Invisible Band is, as my 4 year old says, much fun. With an independent sound, the music is a reflection of music we listened to in college. I can totally see dancing it out in a preschool room to Come Play! and Ants in Your Pants, and I love singing along with How Big. My son’s favorite: Stink Bug.

We’re also enjoying Putumayo Kid’s Picnic Playground, any food-lover who listens will be sure to say this is “her kinda music” as its a souppot of multicultural songs and beats celebrating food, family and fun.

Speaking of food, another CD we’re enjoying is Best of the Bowl, Ingles y Espanol by Hot Peas and Butter. This bilingual CD makes you want to get up and dance to the Latin beat as they mix the Spanish and English.

On a recent roadtrip coming home from an amusement park, the husband asked if I had any baby-appropriate music for our little one. As in, to lull her (and maybe her brothers) to calmness. Wasn’t he surprised when I popped in RockaBye Baby!’s Lullaby Renditions of Aerosmith. We sang along as the kids relaxed and calmed. From Don’t Want to Miss a Thing to Walk This Way, this is a fun sleeper. Want to gift a RockaBye Baby CD but you don’t know which one to gift? Now available on  the RockaBye Baby Music website: a Digital Download Card where the giftee can any one CD as an MP3 download. The packaging is perfect. I received mine today and opened it without reading, wondering where the CD was? Once I read the gift I was so excited to get to select my own music this time!

Last year we hosted a Halloween Party for several of the kids’ friends. We played games, read stories and enjoyed pizza, all before Trick or Treating. But how much did we need a movie? Planning to host this year? Get a copy of A Very Brave Witch … and more Halloween Stories. In addition to A Very Brave Witch, watch animated 7 other Halloween books including A Dark, Dark Tale. Narrators include Sherry Stringfield and Elle Fanning.

Another Scholastic Storybook Treasures production, the Scholastic Treasury of Classic Bedtime Stories will help you and your kids calm for bed nightly. This collection of 4 DVDs includes 28 animated bedtime favorites including Goodnight Gorilla and Harold and the Purple Crayon. A whole month’s worth of bedtime stories!

From the jacket cover, “Sure you love your kids, but your pre-Mom self – the one who wore sexy underwear and took vacations that did not include Happy Meals – had its perks too.  This book is for anyone who relishes her role as Mom but longs for a few minutes with nowhere to be and no diapers to change.”

The book is: If you give a Mom a Martini: 100 Ways to Find 10 Blissful Minutes to Yourself. Check it out – it’s a quick read (the authors appreciate a time-constrained Mom) but full of some fun, quick relaxation tips.

It’s a great gift for any Mom.  Plus, any book that includes the word Mom and Martini within the same sentence is alright in my book.

My daughter just started to read books and is so excited that she can do it by herself! We recently received a new book called “What Mess?” and she couldn’t wait to read it to me.

“What Mess?” is a cute and silly children’s book that tells the story from a little girl’s perspective. Her mommy tells her to clean her room, however she can not find the mess her mommy is talking about. As the story continues, the little girl justifies why the toys should be left out, since she is playing with them all! For instance the little girl’s teddy bears are in the middle of a picnic and can’t be disturbed and her eight baby dolls spread out on the floor under blankets are all taking naps. So she thinks her mommy can’t mean that mess! The story has a repetitive mantra (Mommy must know that) designed to help pre-readers learn to read.

My daughter has been reading it to my son and now every time he sees some sort of mess in our house, he says “mommy – mess”! Gotta’ love that! Check out the author’s blog where your child can enter what name they think the character in the book should be. If selected, the winner will be illustrated in her next book.

Use code MWS to save 10% off the book plus $5.50 flat fee s/h regardless of how many books are ordered. In addition, the author can dedicate and sign the books! Simply enter MWS at checkout and indicate the dedication in the comments section.

I’ve asked myself this question time and again… with the answer, clearly, no, not yet. So it was really fun to ask my 3-year-old this same question today. I asked it when I read to him the new book by Barney Saltzberg, Cornelius P. Mud, Are you Ready for Baby? Together we talked about Cornelius, the adorable little pig who in the first illustration is sitting with his pregnant mom, reading a baby name book. By the next page, Mom brings home a little piglet.

The illustrations are cute, vibrant, preschool friendly; the text, very simple. On each page Cornelius asks if baby can do different things, like eat and play. And on each page, Mom answers “no, not yet.” With the answer to the “what can baby do?” being the very funny line “He can sleep, drink, pee, poop and cry.”  Cornelius also shows some insecurity asking “Do you love him more than you love me?” and Mama reassuringly replies “I have enough love for both of you.”

The brief story opens up so many windows of opportunity for discussion and relating with a preschooler about to become a big brother, it was quick to become a new favorite. It only arrived in the mail Monday and he’s already “read” Cornelius P. Mud, Are You Ready for Baby? several times (as in his chosen book for the past 3 naps and 3 bedtimes): loving the story and the discussions each time.

My kids love cooking with me in the kitchen! We’ve been having so much fun recently with the Handstand Kids Chinese Cookbook, trying out all sorts of recipes together. This cookbook comes packaged in a large takeout box kit with child-friendly chopsticks.

It is so adorable and my kids love it! The Chinese Cookbook Kit introduces kid chefs, ages 3 to 12, to delicious and healthy Chinese recipes. Recipes like Spring-a-licious Spring Rolls, Kung Pow! Chicken and Year of the Monkey Smoothies take your little chef around the world through your own kitchen.

All of the utensils and ingredients are translated into Mandarin so you can speak the language of China as you cook! The recipes are leveled from 1 to 4 chopsticks to determine the recipe’s level of difficulty. Our favorites so far have been the Banana-rama Spring Rolls and the Great Wall of Chicken Lettuce Wraps! We’ve been having a blast cooking while trying to pronounce the different ingredients. They also love practicing with the chopsticks on all sorts of foods!

In addition to the Chinese Cookbook are the Mexican and Italian Cookbook Kits. Each cookbook in the series introduces kid chefs to a new country and culture through tasty, healthy and fun recipes. Each recipe also offers alternatives that allow for dietary flexibility and creativity in the kitchen.

Handstand Kids also carries aprons, chef hats, oven mitts and all-purpose mats that can be used as place mats, cutting boards or work stations. Ours includes a fabulous map of China and a listing of all of the different ingredients in the cookbook in both English and Mandarin. My kids are always practicing!

Enter code MWS on the order page in the coupon box located at the top of the page before checking out to save 20% off of your purchase!