Tasty Tuesday is a day late this week, so I guess technically this is technically Tasty Wednesday. I think that no matter what the day is, you’ll find these are pretty tasty.
Every year I do an assortment of Christmas baking for our family and friends. I try to bake different things each year to mix it up a little. This year Pinterest was a great source for inspiration. I’m still elbow-deep in melted chocolate, so this will be Part One; next week I’ll share the rest of my confections and creations.
2011 Holiday Gift Guide – Suggestions For Babies/Toddlers/Kids (Be sure to check out all the other great Gift Guide items and giveaways here.)
Pajamas – or “jammies” as we refer to them as around here – are a fairly common Christmas present, especially for the tot set. A lot of families I know make it a Christmas eve tradition to give a new set of PJs and then cuddle up for a cocoa and Christmas story before setting out cookies, milk and carrots for Santa and his reindeer.
If you’re considering new jammies as a gift this year then I think you will love Skylar Luna. Their two-piece pajama sets are absoluetly adorable and any child would love to snuggle down in them and dream up some visions of sugarplums. They would also make for a super-cute Christmas picture of the kiddos.Continue reading »
2011 Holiday Gift Guide – Stocking Stuffer Suggestions (Be sure to check out all the other great Gift Guide items and giveaways here.)
Do you remember “cootie catchers” from when you were a kid? They were those folded paper “fortune tellers” that told you if Billy liked you, or if Sally was going to own a mansion when she grew up. They were the perfect decision-maker because they were readily available and easy to customize to the situation.
Cootie catchers have been reinvented; the new Cahooties have been developed to enhance the iconic game to deliver fun, learning and connection among tweens and their friends & families.
Cahooties come in nearly two dozen themes, including Birthday Diva, Slumber Party, My Fab Family and Dogs Rule (in partnership with Animal Planet). Each Cahootie comes with one durable, pre-folded laminated paper game printed with colorful graphics that match the theme, plus 40 removable stickers to help keep the game fresh. Just open the flaps on the Cahootie and place the stickers under each one – eight total. You then play the game, choosing flaps as you go, until the final flap is lifted to reveal a coordinating sticker and either trivia, a fortune, or a challenge.
We had fun playing with our Cahootie – it definitely brought back memories! This would make a cute stocking stuffer for a tween on your list.
Where to Buy:
Cahooties can be purchased from retailers like Amazon or Toys R Us.
Want to Win?
One winner will receive a Cahootie of their own! To enter, fill out the Rafflecopter form below.
ENTER HERE:
a Rafflecopter giveaway I received product in order to facilitate my review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are 100% mine and my family’s.
2011 Holiday Gift Guide – Suggestions For Kids/Tweens
(Be sure to check out all the other great Gift Guide items and giveaways here.)
Are your kids interested in finances? Do they wonder how money is earned – and how to spend it? Would you like to give a gift that’s not only fun, but educational, too?
If the answers to those questions are yes, then you may be interested in the products that make up the Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace for Kids line. The products – which include books, a bank, and a kit full of items – help kids develop financial expertise in fun, easy-to-learn manner.
The book series is based on Junior, a young boy who learns the valuable lessons of giving, sharing, and spending. There are six illustrated books in the series that cover lessons like “Junior Discovers Spending,” “Junior Discovers Work,” and “Junior Discovers Integrity.” The books are also available in an audio format and come in an aluminum lunchbox with Junior and his friends on the front.
The Financial Peace Jr. kit comes with wet-erase boards to keep track of savings and commission; an activity book with stories and games; magnets for giving, saving, and spending; a kid’s sized calculator; envelope system; and an instruction manual for parents. The kit helps parents teach kids how to implement the principles they read about in the book series.
Junior also has a bank, divided up into sections for Giving, Spending and Saving, which lets kids apply in real life what they are learning. The bank features the characters from the Junior book series and is clear plastic so that kids are able to see their money grow. The kit is great, too; the activities
I think these products would be great for any kid who is starting to be curious about how money works. I especially like the bank with it’s separate sections. Teaching kids from a young age to set aside money for both savings and charity is an important lesson, in my opinion. I also enjoyed that everything was approached in a fun way, and not “oh-my-goodness-if-you-don’t-save-now-you’ll-wind-up-living-in-a-box-during-your-retirement” kind of way. Honestly, I would have loved to have had this set when I was a kid.
Where to Buy:
All items are available from Dave Ramesy’s website. The set of 6 Junior books is available for $59.99; the audiobooks are available in a collectible lunchbox for $39.95; Financial Peace, Junior retails for $19.95; and the bank is available for $19.95. You can purchase all three as one set if you purchase theKid’s Monster Pack which is on sale for $49.95 (save 58%!).
Want to Win?
One winner will receive the Kid’s Monster Pack! To enter, fill out the Rafflecopter form below. You will notice something new with the Rafflecopter form. You can either log in with your Facebook account OR enter your name and email (the link to click is just under the Facebook log in). Once you log in, you will see the mandatory entry/entries. After completing the mandatory piece, the optional entries will show. You can complete as many or as few as you’d like. When you come back each day, the items you’ve already completed will be grayed out and only the ones still available for completion or the daily options will show. Logging in just allows the Rafflecopter form to be record for you what you’ve already done – so that you don’t see a giveaway two weeks later and say “Did I do that already?” or if you have to leave the page and finish entering later, you can pick up where you left off.
If you’re looking for a tasty addition to your food table for the holidays – or if you’re looking for a special gift for your favorite foodie or the has-everything-friend – then may I suggest that you consider Rigoni di Asiago gourmet organic jams and spreads. Rigoni di Asiago has based it’s entire company on producing from organic farms. They started with their honey, then proceeded to the Fiordifrutta jams, added the Nocciolata chocolate hazelnut spread and has recently started to produce ready-to-eat fruit desserts.
Each jar of FiordiFrutta jams and fruit spreads is made with 3 pounds of organic fruit and is sweetened with DolciDi apple juice (no added sugar). They use a special low-temperature cooking method when producing them that helps retain the vitamins, minerals and aroma. The jams come in 17 tasty flavors; some are traditional, like strawberry and apricot, and others are more exotic, like bitter orange and Cornelian cherry.
The Nocciolata spread is a special chocolate hazelnut spread that blends dark chocolate, hazelnuts, brown sugar, skim milk powder, cocoa butter and sunflower oil. It’s a creamy version of the spread that you find in your local grocery store, containing less sugar, no palm oil and 15% more hazelnut. It’s a labor of love; the processing phase takes 60 hours!
The spreads and jams are really quite excellent. We sampled the strawberry, raspberry and apricot jams and thought they were all well-worth the reasonable cost of $5-$6 per jar (each jar contains almost 9 ounces). My FIL’s favorite spread is raspberry so we had him try it while visiting one afternoon and he was very impressed. We also sampled theNocciolata spread and if I could have licked thte knife, I would have. I love chocolate and hazelnut as a flavor combination and this was so good. I can’t wait for a lazy weekend when I can make stuffed french toast with it.
I received one or more of the above product in order to facilitate my review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are 100% mine and my family’s.
