Harry Potter Giveaway

Check out my new giveaway at Mom to Tweens

It's the tenth anniversary since Harry Potter and the Scorcer's Stone was released. Leave a comment on my Mom to Tweens blog and be entered to win an anniversary edition of the book, a poster, and a commemorative pin.

What a great idea!

One of my neighbors is having a baby. A bunch of the neighbors are invited to the baby shower. This is her first child and we’d like to get her something nice. We decided to go together so we can get her one large gift. She needs everything, but we’re thinking about getting her a pack-n-play/bassinet. It’s always such a hassle to be the one in charge of the “group gift” though. That is, until I found edivvy.com. This website has items available for purchase and will send invitations to your friends to participate. Every “invitee” gets to see who is going in on the gift. Each person pays his own portion of the bill and the gift recipient receives the gift shipped directly to their home. It couldn’t get much simpler than that.

I can envision using this service for mother's day gifts and splitting the cost between my sisters. That way I wouldn’t have to purchase an item and hope that my siblings pay me back! Another good idea is to use it for gifts ideas for teachers - gift ideas for parents and other people who work in a group setting with our kids. There are also been several times where groups of us who live all over the country want to get a gift for someone, and edivvy would be the perfect solution to that!

Parents To Be

As most of you know, we are an adoptive family, so I didn't give birth to my kids. But even so, I still had the same questions that expecting moms have. Will it be a boy or girl (we were open to the gender of our first child, so it was a surprise to get a boy)? What color should we paint the nursery? And the BIG question - what should we name these kids of ours? Pregnancy is a great source to find answers to all of your questions. And it goes beyond that - even after your baby is born, you can use it as a resource for all of your parenting questions. They even have pages for PreTeen and Teens - the place I've suddenly found myself - I can't believe the years have passed so quickly. I'm going to head over there right now to see what the top baby names are in 2009!

Hiking Boots

Spring has arrived in Wisconsin! At least I hope it has! I realize it's still March and it can definitely still snow in March and sometimes even in April, but we've had some wonderfully warm and sunny weather lately! The weather makes me want to get out to the State Park to go hiking with the dog. I really need some new hiking boots though! I found a site that not only has great deals on hiking boots, but work boots too. The hiking boots I have now are old and aren't very waterproof. I'd really like to get a full leather pair that are waterproof, especially for use at this time of the year when it can get kind of wet outside.

I have lots of friends whose husbands wear work boots to their job everyday - I'm definitely going to pass this site on to them!

Saint Patrick's Day

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!! I'm a little bit Irish so I always wear green on March 17th! A friend asked if we were having corned beef for dinner, but we're not! I should have made Irish Stew though! My kids, who are Guatemalan, always ask if they're Irish, and I tell them that while they aren't Irish by blood, some of their adoptive ancestors were Irish, so they are too. And besides, isn't everyone a little bit Irish on St. Patrick's Day? My kids go to a Catholic school that happens to be named St. Patricks, so today is a big day at school!!!

To See or not to See - that is the question

I’ve worn glasses and/or contacts since I was 12 years old. I started wearing contacts almost exclusively when I was 17 years old, however, prior to that I was a glasses girl. Missy just saw a picture of me the other day from when I was about 14, and oh, the glasses I had on were so ugly – they were huge!

Since I’ve worn contacts, I’ve only had one “current” pair of glasses that I wear when I take my contacts out. I can never justify having more than one pair of glasses since I wear my contacts 98% of the time, and the cost of frames and lenses is so expensive.

I was reading an article in the New York Times today that mentioned a few places to get deals on frames and lenses. One of the places it listed was eyeglasses. I couldn’t believe the great selection when I visited their site. They have frames and lenses for as little as $8.00!!! I’ve never seen a price so low for eyeglasses. For that price, I could easily see buying several pairs and matching them with my outfit or mood each day!

These were my favorites! They probably aren't practical for every day, but they should would be fun for a day when I wanted to be funky!

Missy also wears glasses – mainly for reading – and they have a great children’s selection too! When kids like their glasses or have a few choices, they’re much more likely to wear them.

It's been WAYYYY too long!

I was doing so well keeping up with my blogs! I couldn't wait until the beginning of January when my blogs would be over three months old and I could submit them to more paying sites. And then.....

I got lazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here I am almost a MONTH later updating my blog. I don't know where the time has gone! I know I've been playing way too many computer games instead of devoting my time to my blogs. I also joined Facebook and it can be a bit addicting. So now I'm whipping myself back into shape and hopefully I'll stick with it this time!