Who are the these cute dolls sitting on my couch?  These are the Groovy Girl Dolls.  They are a huge hit in my house, and they will be in yours too!  I personally like dolls that look like a little girl.  I don’t need my daughter to grow up any faster than she already is.  The Groovy Girls Dolls fits that bill and are super cute.  I love that my son (who is one) can also play with them.  There is nothing on them that he can rip off and stick in his mouth (for example, a lot of dolls and stuffed animals have eyes that I have to worry about).  These dolls are super soft, so if your kids whack each other with them, no worries.  They are also small enough to be easily put into a suitcase for a trip to Grandma’s house.  The Groovy Girl Dolls come in several different nationalities too, so your child will easily find one that she can relate too.  The Groovy Girl Pets are so soft that I wouldn’t mind sleeping with them.  I also think they are super cute too. My son loves to walk around hugging them.

As you can see from the picture above, each doll and pet comes with a tag on them.  Now, on the tag, there is a code you can use on the Groovy Girls website, so the fun doesn’t end with just the doll:

As an RSVP member, your child will:

* Receive access to exclusive online RSVP Parties and games
* Use the Creation Station to create hundreds of new outfits
* Get extra Groovy Girls Tunes to play - and download!
* Be able to earn Party Points - and receive digital rewards!

With an RSVP Doll, she’ll also get:

* Her Doll’s outfit added to her Closet, Creation Station and Dance Floor,
* Additional items added to her Creation Station per doll
* A song from her Doll added to her Mod Pod and Dance Floor,
* And, she can chat with her Doll on her Groovy Girls Laptop-what fun!

With an RSVP Pet, your child can also:

* Call her pet to her Mod Pod any time,
* Play with her pet and show off super-cool tricks,
* Mix and match a t-shirt from her pet in the Creation Station - and wear it wherever!

I love that everything related to these dolls is all about promoting age-appropriate values and attitudes. Moms, there is even a place on the site for you too! Madison has had a blast with these, and I know other girls will too (though my one year old boy loves them just as much). The ages for this are 4-9, and these will make any little girl happy come Christmas or her birthday.

I am going to let you all in on a little secret that I am doing to do for Christmas this year. See the picture on the left? Those are stamps. I made them over at PictureItPostage and will be affixing them to all my Christmas cards this year. Tell me that isn’t the cutest thing you have ever seen?  There are just so many uses for these stamps.  You can do what I did and put them on Christmas cards.  However, I can see them being used for baby announcements, engagements, holidays and graduations.  You can’t make an invitation more customized and personal than this.  Plus, you don’t see stamps like this too often.  That makes it unique, and people will love it!  You will be the talk of everyone you send these too!

How hard is it to make these?  It is not hard at all.  PictureItPostage allows you to either create these stamps on their site or you can download a program, and you can create them on your desktop.  You can customize the background color and what color the text is on them too!  It literally took me about 10 minute to completely put this together.  Shipping took no time at all.  I am 100% satisfied with this company and would highly recommend you use them also.

Also, they are having a “Get Real” Photo contest that starts October 31st. They want to see the best of the worst when it comes to photos.  They want you to send them your worst pictures that you really don’t want to see the light of day. How do you enter?  On October 31, head over to PictureItPostage and upload your photo. Beginning November 21, all visitors to the “Get Real” contest website will have a chance to vote for their favorite photos.  The winners will be announced December 8.  What can you win?  They are giving away two Canon Digital SLR Camera and five PictureItPostage coupon codes good for 100 customized photo stamps. The ten first prize winners will each receive one PictureItPostage coupon code good for one pack of customized postage stamps.  We all have horrible pictures — now have them work for you!

Make sure you check out PictureItPostage!

Do you have problems taking pictures of yourself with others? Do you find your arm ending up in the shot? Do you find that you aren’t in any shot, because you are always taking the picture? Do you find that you and your subject have to pose awkwardly just to get you both in the picture?  (Thanks to Christine for use of her arm picture).

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you need to get an xShot.  What is an Xshot?

XShot is a telescopic stainless-steel rod that adds three feet of reach to any point-and-shoot or hand-held video camera. It is super easy to use. All you need to do is screw your camera into the Xshot to get to work. No screwdriver is required! You can make the xShot 9 inches all the way up to 37 inches. Want to see how easy it works? (Thank you Julie for the pictures!)

The first picture shows you how the xShot works. The second picture shows the actual picture that was taken. Its pretty awesome, isn’t it?  Wouldn’t it be nice to be on vacation and not have to ask a stranger to take your picture?  I personally found it super easy to easy.  I had no problem putting my Cybershot camera on there and taking lots of awesome pictures (unfortuntaly, my camera is broke, and I can’t get any of my pictures off.  I am waiting for a cable to fix this problem from Sony).  My fear was that I wasn’t going to be able to take steady pictures.  It was actually super easy.  I had absolutely no problems with it.  I found the xShot super lightweight (it’s only 5 oz).

When can you use this?  Some perfect times would be when you are traveling, hiking, camping, vacation, the beach, parties, concerts, sports events, etc.  I know that the xShot will be an item that will come with us no matter where we go!

Wipe Clean Letters is a must have book for any preschool aged children you have in your house.  This book comes with its own dry erase marker (and a place to keep it too!).  The book is made of cardboard, and you are able to wipe clean any work your children do in the book.  Each page has a litter of the alphabet on it.  it also has words that start with that letter or have that letter in it (example:  for s, you would see sinks on the page.) It has the uppercase and the lowercase letters on each page to trace.  Some of the pages even have a small activity to do on them.  Madison can spend hours with this book.  I love that it is teaching her picture and word recognition, and that it is still fun for her.  If you want a great interactive book, this is what you should get!

My favorite store ever online (the one that I order everything from for my businesses) is now selling t-shirts!  I wish they were doing that when I was selling lia sophia, because I would have been a huge customer for that.

However, enough about why I think this is cool.  Let me tell you why you want to use VistaPrint.  First, they are cheap.  I order my business cards from them, because I only have to pay for shipping.  If you want a custom picture on your cards, it is an extra $5.  Another thing I love about Vista Print is that they have anything and everything you need for a business from t-shirts I mentioned before to business cards to stampers.  They are always have sales.  Once you get on their email lists, you will find that whatever you need to order is usually on some sort of sale.  For example, if you use TShirts25 you can get 25% off any T-shirts that you order!  I have also always been impressed with the quality of their products.  I have yet to receive a product that I did not like!

I can only say lots of good things about Vistaprint.  I would highly recommend them for all your personal and business needs.

Teddy Bear’s Fun to Learn First 1000 Words is book that is great for all little ones. My 4 year old enjoys it just as much as my 1 year old. Granted, you won’t find las vegas hotels in here. However, there is pretty much everything else. Each page in the book has a theme (like the beach). It lists the theme and a ton of items to go with it (for example, the beach pages show things like sunscreen, water wings, sailboat, beachball, etc). There is also a picture in the center of the page with all the miscellaneous items.  There is also a short poem asking you questions about the theme.  Will (my one year old) just likes to look at everything and go “ohhhh”.  Madison (my 4 year old) enjoys looking at the pictures and telling us what each thing is.  She likes to answer the questions for us too.  My only complaint is that the pages are paper which are a little to easy for Will to rip.

This book is great because your little ones can use it as they grow older.  I would definitely purchase it a birthday, baby shower, and/or Christmas gift.  The little ones who you are getting for will get a lot of use out of it!

Winnie The Pooh’s Sleepytime Hum is another great book for little ones.  It has awesome illustrations and is about Winnie the Pooh going to bed (which we want all our little ones to do).  This makes a great bedtime story.  The book is made from cardboard, so it is very durable.  It is short, so it keeps the attention of even the shortest attention spans.  It also tells you about why Pooh wants to go to sleep at night (he might even want to buy the moon) which hopefully will entice your little one to go to sleep. (If it doesn’t work for that, well it was worth the try, right?)  The whole book is a short little poem.  Each page has a picture and a couple lines of the poem.  Though my favorite has to be the last page:

Winnie is sleeping,
so you close your eyes, too!
Catch up with your dreams -
Pooh’s waiting for you!