This contest is over. We have five winners: Samantha Pruitt, Erma, Julie, Robin, and Jen. Congrats!

Do you like coffee and/or tee?  Then you definitely need to try The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf company.  They have a ton of flavors to pick from, and there is pretty much something there for everyone.  Plus, they have added some holiday flavors!  Some of your holiday choices include Pumpkin Latte & Ice Blended drink, Peppermint Latte & Ice Blended drink, Espresso Mint Chip Ice Blended drink and the Winter Dream Tea® latte.  They also have Limited Edition Holiday Blend Coffee and the Winter Dream Tea. The holiday menu items will be available at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf stores from November 10 through January 6.

If you are looking for a gift for a coffee or tea lover, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf will also have limited edition gift packages including:

* “8 Days of Coffee” — eight 2-ounce bags of medium, dark roast, decaf and flavored ground coffees
* “Tea Quartet” — four of our famous whole leaf teas each in its own box with 5 tea bags
* “Coffee Duet” — a combo package of two popular 8-ounce coffee bags
* “Winter Dream Tea & Mug Set” — featuring a The Coffee Bean logo signature tea mug and popular seasonal tea
* “Holiday Blend & Mug Set” — includes The Coffee Bean logo coffee mug and a the dark and distinctive, rich flavored Holiday Blend Coffee
* “Special Dutch Chocolate & Mug Set” — a signature cocoa mug with the The Coffee Bean logo and our very own rich cocoa mix
* “Warm Winter Cocoas Set” — includes three 8-oz cocoa powder tins in the most popular flavors: Special Dutch™ Chocolate, French Deluxe™ Vanilla and White Chocolate.

If you love coffee or tea (or know someone who does), you definitely need to check them out.  That being said, I have 5 – $5 gift certificates to give out, so you can try them!  Here’s what you need to do:

1. Leave a comment on this post.  Check out the The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf site and tell me what flavor you’d like to try.
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc. (1 entry for each social network).

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

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This giveaway will end on December 17 at 8:00 pm CST is available to US residents. Good luck!

Rarely do I come across a book that inspires me just as much as my kids. However, Whats Your Red Ball is that book. This book is like no other book you’ve ever seen.  It is about how to overcome adversity and find your true passion.  As an adult, we all need to do this too, so this book, while geared at kids, can certainly get you thinking as an adult.  The author of this book, Kevin Carroll, went from an abandoned child with a love of sports to working for the Air Force, Philadelphia 76ers, and Nike.  His story, which is how the book starts, makes you want to be all you can be.  The book itself gives you the material to make your own “box of magic”.  This box is all about your gifts, your talents, your aspirations, your interests, and your hopes.  The rest of the book tells you how to figure out how to decorate and fill your box.  There are questions you need to answer and excercises you need to do, but by the end, you will have figured out whats your red ball.

Your age does not matter for this book.  At 31, I find inspiration in it.  This book is perfect for anyone who has lost their path in life and for those who are just finding it now.

This is another unique toy from Oh! Toys.  I think my husband was just as excited to play with this as Madison.  This too is for ages 3 and up.  However, this does come with marbles, so if you have kids younger than three, you need to be very careful (the rule here is that Madison can’t play with this unless Will is napping).

Again, this is another toy that I like, because it makes my kids think. It requires them to think and do problem solving using creativity.  There are no bells and whistles; yet, Madison played with this for a good two hours the first day we took it out of the box.  Basically, what you do is make a track for the marble to work its way down. Right now, Madison is making pretty basic tracks with it. However, daddy did help her make a more intricate system like this one:

Also, clean up is awesome.  All of these pieces fit nicely into a bag that comes with it!  You don’t have to worry about how you are going to get all the pieces back in perfectly so you can close the box.  I also love that this is a toy that Madison can grow into.  Right now, she is only making very basic designs.  However, as she gets older, I know her designs will get more intricate.  This will also make it through the wear and tear of several children too.  It is made with good quality materials.  TheCugolino set contains 37 pieces and is 100% compatible with cuboro’s classic system.

Now, are you like me and impressed by the selection of unique toys from Oh! Toys? If so, I have the giveaway for you. Oh! Toys has offered to give one of my lucky readers a $25 gift certificate to their site. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Leave a comment on this post. Go check out Oh! Toys and tell me what you would use this gift certificate for!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc. (1 entry for each social network).

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

<a href="http://lisareviews.com"><img src="http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk258/blm03_photos/125ad-1.png" border="0" alt="Lisa Reviews" /></a>

This giveaway will end on December 9 at 8:00 pm CST is available to US residents only. Good luck!

As we are getting closer to Christmas, it is getting to be time to send out Christmas cards and Christmas invitations. eInvite.com is your one stop show. If you like photo cards (who doesn’t — especially if you have kids), you can easily upload your family photos to their site. For less than $100, you can easily get 100 cards printed up. Even better, selected cards are now 40% off until December 2nd! The photo cards are made with high quality paper stock too. Having a party? They have over 100 invitations to pick from. They have everything from fun to elegant to classic. You can even get a holiday entertaining pack. This is 100 personalized beverage napkins and are available in either green and red with a stylized tree motif or muted pink and green (these you can use year round). Do you care about the environment? There is a whole selection of cards that are 100% environmentally sound and earth friendly. They are handcrafted in St. Louis and made with recycled cotton fiber. Have a few people you have no idea what to get for Christmas? You could get them “The LittleBox”. This is a box of 500 3”x6” sheets of personalized paper in a matching box. They also have Pen and Stationary sets which include 100 personalized note cards with matching envelopes. After all the holiday fun, what do you need? Thank you cards! eInvite.com has those too! They have a ton of personalized stationery options. There is definitely something for every taste and every budget there.

Make your list, check it twice, and then stop at eInvite.com for all your Christmas needs.

One of the gifts I plan on getting Bill this Christmas is called PrismaPixels. For those who don’t know, Bill is an electrical engineer who loves to do logic puzzles. Anything that involves math and logic, he is there. PrismaPixels is nothing like you have seen before. Each puzzle has numbers along the top and along the side of it. These numbers will give you clues about which and how many boxes to color in. If you color all the boxes correctly, you will see a picture.

The rules for this kind of puzzle are fairly easy. First, those numbers I talked about before, represent the number of consecutively colored boxes of the same color in that row or column. The colored boxes and group of boxes occur in the same order as the numbers. There must be at least one blank box between two sections of the same colored boxes. There may or may not be one or more blank boxes between two sections of different color boxes.

Once you get the puzzle book, all these rules are listed. There is also a couple of pages of tips (and images), so you can learn how to do these puzzles. Now, by following the directions, I even figured out how to do these! These puzzles do require you to think, but are pretty fun to do.