If you are looking for a very affordable gift for kids ages 3 – 7, then you must get the Poingo.  With the Poingo, you are able to touch pictures and/or the text, the their favorite characters are brought to life with either music, sounds, and words.  The best part is that the Poingo starter kit is $34.99 and is available at Target, Toys R Us, Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s Wholesale Clubs.  It comes with the pen shaped Poingo and two large hardcover interactive storybooks.  This is definitely affordable, and the starter kit is awesome.  You don’t have to automatically buy another $100 worth of books right off the bat.  You have a working system right from the start.  The book choices are excellent.  The books that came with ours are Cars and Finding Nemo, so it was definitely right up my kids alley.  These movies are favorites in our house, so my kids had a definite interest in the books.   They also have Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Winnie The Pooh.  The pen itself is simple to use.  All you have to do is click it on the part of the book with the words, and it will read that whole section.  You can also click on the images and for sound effects.  There are words that are highlighted also, and you get a definition of the word.  You can also click on images and find out what they are or get a cool sound effect.  Madison is actually able to take this and read the book by herself.  She loves having that kind of independence.  My kids love to read, so this is really a naturally progression for them.

This is one of the best affordable educational toys on the market for kids.  I recommend checking it out — you can even try a demo here.

One of the top items this Christmas is going to be the Parrot Minikit Slim Limited Edition.  If you need a handsfree speakerphone for your car, this is the one you should get.  Granted if you want something that looks a little less girly, don’t the limited edition.  The other ones are just black, but work just as good.  This sleek speakerphone works great in your car.  You can easily put it on the visor of your car and forget about it.  It easily adapts to your environment and can even easily fit into your pocket.  Now, this is so easy to use.  As long as your phone as bluetooth, the Parrot will automatically synchronize its phonebook with your mobile phone.  Now, it has an awesome text to speech function which allows you to just say who you want to call.  You don’t even need to train it!  If there are several numbers for that person, you just need to specify by saying home, mobile, etc.  You can even record a shortcut for your contacts, so you can call them even quicker.  I love that it is extremely hard to tell where the microphone is, and it doesn’t have any speakers!  The sound from this is awesome.  The other really cool thing is that you can use up to 5 phones with this, and it has multi speaker voice recognition.

If you know anyone without a bluetooth handsfree speakerphone, you have to buy them this for Christmas.  It is so much easier to use than a headset and it looks nice too.

What kind of cards do you send out for Christmas? Do you do a photo holiday card like you see on the left? In my family, that is exactly what I do. A lot of the people we send Christmas cards to only see my kids a couple of times a year.  It is a great way to show them how much my kids have grown.  I’ve done it both ways too — either just the kids or us as a family.  I also love receiving cards like this, so I can see how their kids have grown over the last year.

If you are looking for a huge selection of Photo Holiday Cards, you need to go check out Tiny Prints!  They truly have cards for every occasion that you could want.  They have both regular cards and photo cards too.  However, Tiny Prints and I are working together to offer you an awesome contest.  You can win your holiday card package with matching postage (Winner to receive 50 of the selected card, 72 address labels and 60 stamps with the matching card design.).  What do you have to do to win this?

1.  You need to visit their Tiny Prints Holiday Photo Cards selection and tell me which holiday card has “slushy to chic” in the description.  Once you have found it, put a fun and creative greeting on it.

2.  After you have found the card, click “ask a friend” and enter my email lisareviewsATgmail.com.  Also, click “save in favorites”

3.  Then I just need you to put in the comments of this post your greeting!

I will be selecting the winner from those who pick the correct card and come up with the most creative greeting!  Now, you can only win once, but you can enter as many times as you like.  If you have won a Tiny Prints contest in the last 90 days, you aren’t eligible.  The contest is to run from October 20, 2008 through Friday, November 7, 2008.  Contestants also relinquish greeting text ownership and allow Tiny Prints to use their entries for promotional use.  Stamps will be fulfilled separately from Tiny Prints order.  Best of all, this contest is offered to everyone no matter where you live!  I know that sometimes if you live outside of the US you miss out on a lot of these great contests.  Tiny Prints understand that and has opened it up to everyone!

Good Luck!

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!