Exercise Your Civic Duty

If you have ever criticized a politician.

If you have ever complained about the government.

If you have any stake in how you country/state/city/school board/local government is run.

Then VOTE. please.

Christmas is Coming!!!

I have used Shutterfly for photos every since K was born in 2002. I love it. I really do. There picture quality is great, the delivery is pretty fast, and they have great products. And it is so easy to share great photos with friends and family.

We just recently sent out Halloween cards (yes, I know - WHO does that?) and they were great.
Now I am looking at their amazing selection of Christmas cards. One thing I love about Shutterfly is that they allow you to use multiple pictures. With 3 kids, getting a good group shot is iffy at best. This way I can put a bunch of pictures on my cards, and everyone will look good in at least one! Many other providers only have limited options for multiple photos.

Right now, I LOVE these (not my photos!):
These (and more) can be found on their website here.

If you don't celebrate Christmas, they also have gorgeous Hannukah cards as well!



Or if you are like my beloved MIL, you will get your cards out late, and perhaps this will come in handy!! (hee hee)



I am also thinking about some of these for Christmas gifts:
You can personalize each and every month - with more than one photo! And for less than $20 (closer to $10 if you buy multiples!) - how can you lose? (watch out grandparents!)

So yes, Shutterfly will give me 50 free cards for this post. But if you know me IRL - you certainly know how much I love Shutterfly, as you have received countless pictures, cards, etc with their logo from me. I have tried other services, but always come back to Shutterfly.

I have been using their photos to scrapbook for years. And although I am a paper scrapbooker - I have also cheated and use their amazing, quick, professional, easy digital scrapbooking services for some of my albums. If you go on vacation with others, it is the easiest way to put all your pictures together. And PAINLESS! And the albums are beautiful - complete with my own captions and LOTS of photos per page (the way I like it!)

So that is my tip to get ready for Christmas. Visit Shutterfly and find lots of easy solutions!


This post sponsored by Shutterfly. Do you want 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly? Click here to go to Shutterfly for information on how you can get 50 free cards this holiday season, and make sure to select me as the referral source!

Yes, We Are Batty!

Happy Halloween!

Disney Secret ----shhhh

This past weekend we took the kids to Disney. I had a conference in Orlando, and so we took them out of school for 2 days and had a BLAST. More on that later.

For now - I found out one of the BEST KEPT SECRETS of Disney. If you are a Disney freak (like me) you are well familiar with the Bippity Boppity Boutique, where kids can get made up like a Disney princess. It it awesome, and the girls did it last trip. But at $55++++ per child, it wasn't in the cards for this visit.

But on my first day there, I saw a little girl with her hair up in a bun, bright colors, and sparkles. It was so cute. I asked if she had been to Bippity. Her mom said no. And then she told me. At the Main Street Barber Shop (in the Magic Kingdom) you can get a little color and sparkle for $7.50. I KNOW! Awesome! They even do boys with hair gel and they can even make a little Mickey head on their hair. (Big Man didn't want it, so I don't have pics). It was certainly not as fancy as Bippity, but it was really cute, the girls got LOTS of compliments, and for less than $8??!! AWESOME!

Will surely be on our to-do list for future trips!

That's what Works for Me! Find other Works for Me tips here!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Fulfilling a life long dream, DH and I finally went to the Baseball Hall of Fame. And it was amazing. There are SOOOOO many artifacts! We could have been there for 6-8 hours easy, but the kids took it happily for about 2 1/2. The museum is great in that is includes a scavenger hunt for kids that keeps them engaged!

We particularly like the multi-media movie presentation, the individual team "lockers" (see Nats above), and many of the fantastic displays like the All American Girls League, baseball in movies, and specific milestones in baseball history. Would have loved to spend more time watching all many short interviews and taped stories. Just means we need to go back again! If you are a baseball fan at all, I highly recommend it!!!

Loving the Foliage! (and apparently beer)

2 weeks ago we went on an RV vacation - this time to New York, specifically Cooperstown. The leaves were in FULL color and just GORGEOUS!

Here in the DC area, we had a bit of a drought, so the leaves are not that great. But up North a few hours - spectacular!

We had a great Fall weekend of not just leaf-peeping, but apple loving too! K especially liked cider press, as she is learning about simple machines in school. We went to several apple mills and enjoyed cider slushies, a cider float (cider, vanilla ice cream and ginger ale!) and lots of cider donuts!!



We also went to 2 local breweries, which had root beer for the kids. Naturally, when Big Man had to tell about his weekend at school he said he went to Yogi Bear Town (it was a jellystone campground) and to breweries. Nevermind the Baseball Hall of Fame, Howe Caverns, Herkimer Diamond Mine, etc. He posts on the weekend summary at PreSchool for a week that we took him to breweries. Gotta love it.

Fun Easy Craft

I got a bunch of these bottle caps to try the bottle cap necklace that is all over the blogosphere. They are super easy, and I think they are cute. Really takes just 6 steps.

1) put caps in small frying pan and heat up for about 5 minutes. This allows you to peel the wax/plastic thingy from the bottom.

2) using a nail and hammer, make 2 small holes in the side of the bottle cap.

3) find images on line and print them out at about at the size of 1".

4) cut out the images and glue them in the bottle cap.

5) cover with either a plastic disk, or with diamond glaze

6) thread string through two holes.

I think they are adorable, and the kids LOVE them. Very easy to personalize for anything they want. If you have a kid that I know IRL, expect to get some of these. We may make a bunch for Halloween too!