Another affordable toy out there on the markets this year can be purchased at Macy’s. At $14.99, Skoodlez makes a great toy for your kids or a grab bag, and can be given to kids 4 – 12. The stuffed animal has weighed down hands and feet, so you can easy pose them and hang them.  The cool part is that there is a coin handing around the stuffed animals neck.  You take the code off the coin and use that to access the online world.  On the site, children are challenged to create their own stories.  There are three different settings, so you can taylor it to your child’s age.  Beginner is from 4 – 6, medium is from 7 – 9, and advanced is 10 – 12.  When they finish their story, they can share them Skoodlez community.  They can also print them out.

This makes the perfect gift for the kid who has everything.  The Everday Skoodlez line includes fifteen animals:  hippo, cat, dog, mouse, duck, lion, tiger, leopard, panda, bear, zebra, giraffe, monkeys, and elephant.  There is also twenty four holiday ones.  They is definitely something here for everyone.

As many of you know, we remodeled our basement this last summer, so we had some extra room in the house. We now have a huge play area for the kids. However, even though the basement itself is warm, the floor is freezing cold. We have been looking for sandals and/or slippers for Will that he wouldn’t easily be able to take off. We found the perfect match with the Polliwalks shoes. These shoes are not only cute, but extremely functional too. For the winter time, we got him the puppy dog shoes. They are super warm for him. I love that the bottoms are nonstick. We have hardwood floors upstairs which also get very cold in the winter. I can never put him in socks, because he either doesn’t leave the socks on or he slips and falls wherever he tries to go. With these shoes, he can’t easily get them off (though I can easily get them on), and he isn’t falling all over. He also is a huge puppy fan right now, so he loves them just because they are puppies.

Now, for the summer (or when we can’t find his puppy shoes), we got him the Fish Shoes. I love them. These shoes include the back straps that ensure that they stay on your little ones feet. It also makes it super easy to adjust for a custom fit for your kids’ feet. They are super easy to get on and my son has yet to try and take them off.  The fish lips change color when exposed to UV rays of the sun too!  How cool is that?  Right now, these are only in select Dillards stores and online at Zappos.com.  They will be available at all of their retailers in Jan/Feb.

Overall, I am impressed with the Polliwalks shoes that we got. They are made out of high quality material, and try as he might, my son has not figured out how to wreck them yet. They are cute and can definitely take a beating. These are shoes that will easily be passed down from kid to kid and still look great!  Now, since these are so great, I want to offer pair to one of my lucky readers!

1. Leave a comment on this post.  Check out the Polliwalks site and tell me which pair of Polliwalks shoes you would want.
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For 5 additional entries,

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This giveaway will end on December 14 at 8:00 pm CST is available to US residents only. Good luck!

I personally believe books always make great gifts. We have installed into our children how important reading is, and you can tell. Both my one year old and my four year old can often be seen flipping through books without Bill or me even around.  This is why I l love companies like GiftLit who make it easier to give books as gifts to both children and adults alike.

GiftLit has an advisory board of librarians, educators, authors, and industry experts that select the books that are sent out, so you know these are great books. They have books for every age too!  They have books for toddlers on up.  They way this works is you pick with selection of books you want.  If you are looking at the kids books, you can choose which age group you want.  For adults, you can pick anything from fiction to mysteries to history.  You can also choose how long you want your gift subscription to last.  You can buy them in 3, 6, or 12 month increment.  The best part of this is that this is the gift that keeps on giving.  Instead of the one present you get Christmas morning, you can potentially have a gift every month of the year.

We have this come to our house, and we love it.  The books are great quality books that I would have never thought to check out.  Also, what kid doesn’t like to get mail for them?  Actually, what adult doesn’t like getting a present in the mail each month?  This is truly the gift that keeps on giving, and I am deciding which book lover in my family is getting this.  If you’d like to get this for yourself or as a present, just make sure you use the code LISA1130, so you can get 10% off your order!

Want your kids to enjoy bath time even more? You have to get WettGiggles soap then.  I can honestly say that this has to be the cutest soap I have ever seen.  WettGiggles is actually a 3 in one product.  First, you have the soap.  It is made with natural glycerin, essentials oils, and shea butter.  The soap doesn’t dry out your skin and is actually quite nice to use.  Then there is the toy on top.  Lastly, in the soap there is a manicure brush to help get at the kid’s fingernails.  There are nine unique characters, and each has its own scent.  For example, Cupid, the pup, is coconut banana scented, and Juliet, the duck, is orange scented.  The scents also aren’t knock you over overwhelming, so they can be used in a house where heavy scents are an issue.  These also make an excellent talking point when you put them by your sink!  Everyone will ask where you got them from!

This definitely falls under a unique Christmas gift that every child will enjoy (and some parents too!).

Let me start by saying up until now, I was not a huge fan of Barbie. As a kid, I didn’t really play with her, and Madison is too little for them. I actually had no idea that Barbie even had DVDs out (and sold more than 58 million units!) till I came across Barbie & The Diamond Castle.  I was all ready to not like it.  However, I was surprised to find that I did like it (and the really sad thing is that I have one of the songs stuck in my head, and we watched it over two hours ago!).  The story was fast moving enough that it kept Madison’s attention.  Will absolutely loved the dogs in this movie.  Ever time they came on the screen, he screamed and giggled.  The animation was great — they almost looked real.  At no point did the movie get too scary either (sometimes when bad things happen in movies it scares the kids).  I like the moral of the story too.  It was about friendship being the greatest gift of all.  The DVD didn’t really push the moral either, but with the great story, really got it across.  The music in this movie is good too (see note above about having it stuck in my head).  Madison was singing the songs from it immediately after watching it.  After watching this movie, we will definitely be getting more Barbie movies.