This giveaway is over. Congrats to Kimberly and Janet F. I will be contacting your shortly!

I am quite use to living with hard water.  When I lived in Wisconsin and when we lived in Aurora, we had hard water.  Hard water is tough on a lot of things.  However, one of the places you can really see it is in your bathroom.  You will often find you have what looks like soap scum that you just can’t remove.  That is where CLR Bathroom and Kitchen Cleaner comes into play.  When we lived in Aurora, we used this cleaner every time we cleaned the tub.  It was the only thing that take the “scum” we had off.  I can only highly recommend it.  Now that we live in a suburb of Chicago, we don’t have that problem quite as much.  However, over the last couple of months, I have noticed that something is definitely going with our water.  When you get water out of the tap, it is very cloudy (not sure what is causing that).  I have also noticed that we are starting to get that “soap scum” again.  I decided to pull out our go to fix:  CLR Bathroom and Kitchen Cleaner.  Guess what?  It got rid of the mess in the tub yet again.  I love this product, and I can only give it high reviews.  Best of all, CLR has earned the EPA’s Designed for the Environment designation, so you know that it contains no phosphates, ammonia or bleach.

That being said,  I am giving away two Cleaning Bucket prize packs!  The Bucket will include CLR’s entire line of products and various tools to help you clean your house.  Here’s what you need to do:

1. Leave a comment on this post. Check out their products here and tell me which ones you need in your house.
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 and Canada residents. Good luck!

Ever watch WordWorld on PBS? If so, this word magnet set makes perfect sense. If you have never seen the show, the best way I can describe it is that is a cartoon.  The characters in the this cartoon look like what they are like a bee.  However, their body spells what they are.  You can see what I mean by looking at the image on the right.  This is for kids three and up.  However, I found that my 18 month old loves it too (I just need to keep an eye on him, so he doesn’t try to eat the pieces)!  You get 7 3D word magnets, 5 flat magnets, and a 2 sided fold and go play mat.  The kids love the magnet aspect of it.  I love that this doesn’t require batteries.  It requires my kids to use their imaginations and make up stories.  I also love that it has its own carrying case, and that the magnets have their own spot in the play map.  This has been a hit in my house, and I can definitely see it being a hit in yours.

Eebee’s adventures products are designed to help you and your baby transform everyday play into learning that lasts. These books definitely do that.

Eebee’s Bath Time Adventure is a pretty cool book. You are actually able to take it into the tub with you! You are able to follow along in the story and press certain things to hear the book squeak at you or what a sponge sounds like. When you submerge the book, you now are able to use the same thing so squirt water.

All About Me & You is another hit with my son Will.  There is a mirror in the back of the book.  The mirror alone makes my son laugh.  Each page of the book has directions like make a funny face into the mirror or give a kiss.  It has then touch their nose and finding their tummy too.  It is an extremely interactive book that will bring hours of giggle time to you home.  This book is also made out of carboard so, you don’t have to worry about your kids destroying it.

Eebee’s Laundry Time Adventures is an excellent cloth book that works on words, sounds, and textures.  There are some fine motor skills that get worked on too.  The book has you taking the towels out of the laundry bag and putting them in the washer among other things that you do when you are doing the laundry. I think I may have had just as much fun as Will with this book (don’t tell anyone).

Since Will loves to play peek-a-boo, eebee’s Peek-a-Boo Adventures was another hit in our house also.  This cloth activity book was again fun for both Will and me.  This book has eebee hiding in all sorts of places for us to play peek-a-boo with him.

At 18 months, it is really hard to find toys and books geared towards his age, and the eebee adventure books really do that.  We have had a blast with these books, and I can only recommend that everyone pick up a set.

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.
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 14 at 8:00 pm CST is available to US residents only. Good luck!

Even wonder how the studios make animated movies? If you do The Alchemy of Animation is a book you should read. This book explores the role of the directors, story artists, songwriters, and animators who each play role in the final product that we all see at the theater.  We get too see the digital techniques of filmmaking and behind-the-scenes work from many of the current Disney films.  We get to see scenes from Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt.  We even get to see the stop-motion animation of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.  I knew that a lot of work went in behind the scenes to make these movies as great as they are, but until now, I really never understood HOW much work.  There is just so much stuff that goes on behind the scenes until now.  If you are interested in animation or how these blockbuster cartoons are done, then you need to check out The Alchemy of Animation.  It is definitely a great book to look at and read.