With Christmas just over five weeks away, many of our children will start bringing home handmade Christmas decorations from school. I not only save every decoration my kids make, I hang them proudly on my Christmas tree. Every year, I carefully unpack the paper stars outlined with glue and sprinkled with glitter, the pinecones coated with glue, sprinkled with glitter and tied with a ribbon for hanging, and the snowmen made from pompoms, and give them places of honor right on the tree.  There are no store bought ornaments that mean more to me than those treasures, made with my childrens’ own hands.

Parent Bloggers Network asked us to post this weekend about our handmade treasures, and although I could have gone down to the basement and unpacked the kids’ decorations, what I decided to show instead is a decoration my husband made in 1979 when he was 11. I don’t remember when he first showed it to me, I assume his mother must have given it to him when he got his first apartment. But ever since it came into our house, it’s had a place of honor. Right now it lives on the bottom shelf of our large curio cabinet in the living room. I present to you, our handmade treasure, the Elf on the Sled:

Chris made this at his Grandma’s house, so he doesn’t know where the elf figure or the sled itself came from. He thinks the sled might have been a kit that he glued together. At one time the elf was also lightly glued to the sled but it’s no longer attached. The best part? He gave the sled a name:

Yep, “Mean Mother”. His Mother passed away two years ago, but he tells me that she wasn’t mad that he named the sled that. So there you have it, our handmade treasure. This PBN Blog Blast is sponsored by Klutz, the makers of award-winning activity books for people of all ages. With Klutz books, you can learn everything from juggling to face painting, and they are available at most bookstores. Even I could probably learn to do crafts with those books!

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This giveaway is closed. Congratulations to the winner, Mary from Everyday Baby Steps!

This is an AMAZING giveaway! Tiny Prints is having a “slushy to chic” Holiday Card Greeting Contest, and they are generously giving one lucky reader of MomReviews a Holiday Card Package including 50 Holiday Cards, 72 Address Labels, and 60 matching Stamps, a value of $126.10!! To be entered to win though, you do have to do a *little* work, but I think it’s worth it to ask you to do this

Start by visiting the Tiny Prints Holiday Photo Cards page and search for the card that has “slushy to chic” in the description. Once you find it, click “ask a friend”, which will open a new window. You will see a place to put an email address, type in elizabeth@momreviews.net and that will let me know that you found the correct card. Your email to me counts as your entry. After you do that, click the “save in favorites” gray button next to “personalize”.

Now, in your comment here, do not give away the location of the card! What I do want is a comment with a fun and creative greeting to use on a holiday card. The winner will be the person who identifies the correct “slushy to chic” card and comes up with the best greeting.

Contest Rules: If you have won a Tiny Prints contest in the last 90 days, you aren’t eligible. The contest is to run from October 25, 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 understands that and has opened it up to everyone!

Good luck everybody!

Value of Holiday Cards-$74.50
Value of Address Labels-$27.00
Value of 60 Stamps-$24.60
=$126.10 !!

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Do you still need to buy a Halloween costume for a child or for yourself? Check out all the great costumes still available on Halloween Party Store.com! Family Review Network gave me the opportunity to choose a costume from the site, so I let Nathan look over the choices with me and he picked Iron Man. It’s a really hot costume this year! I chose the largest size available which was 10-12, and unfortunately for Nathan, it was too small. The site puts a size chart right on each page, and I thought Nathan was within the weight range for that size, but then I weighed him and he is actually bigger. So he won’t be able to wear the costume, but I’ll hold on to it and pass it on to a friend.

So my suggestion is, make sure to scroll down the page and look at the size chart, and if you aren’t sure what size your child wears, weigh them before you order! There’s still a great selection of infant, toddler, children’s, and adult costumes, shipping on orders under $50.00 is only $6.99, and orders are shipped the same day using Express or Priority shipping. Don’t paw through picked-over racks at Target or Wal-Mart looking for that costume your child MUST have, find it at Halloween Party Store and have it delivered the next day!

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Saving money when you shop online by finding coupon codes for the products you want to buy is HOT this year. Don’t usually shop online? Well, to be honest, me neither, but after reading a great blog post with five reasons women shop online, I’m starting to see some of the benefits. I very seldom go shopping with all three of my children, because the stress of keeping the three of them together ruins the fun of shopping! Shopping online means I can browse to my heart’s content without having to stop and argue with my kids over whether or not they can buy a toy or who’s holding Kaitlyn’s hand.

And with coupon codes, shopping online can also save money. Coupon Codes Mall is a blog-like website that lists the coupon codes for over 150 stores, arranged in alphabetical order. You know where I do the most shopping online? Amazon.com. I buy a lot of books and toys from Amazon, but I also know that you can buy almost anything you can think of from the site. Coupon Codes Mall has Amazon coupons, it never even occurred to me to look for discounts first! Just browsing through the list, I found some items with Promo codes that would make great holiday gifts- the Ultreo Ultrasound Toothbrush, WaterPik, and products from Norelco, for example. If you are making your Christmas list, planning to shop online, and want to save money, please stop by Coupon Codes Mall to look for discounts!

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Do you realize that there are only SIXTY THREE days until Christmas (October has 31 days)? GAH!! It’s bad enough that the Halloween costume section of Target is slowly getting edged out by the mechanical reindeer and the giant inflatable snowmen. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Christmas, I turn into a big ball of mush at Christmastime, but 61 days? It’s time to start thinking about Holiday gifts, which means it’s time for me to start gathering together my list of the best stuff out there!

Whenever you see this badge, you’ll know that I’m reviewing or giving away a product that would make a great holiday gift. And although I’m sure I could come up with a few on my own, what I really need is help from experts! So, I’m calling all marketing, public relations, online media, and advertising reps to email me about having me review your holiday products. I want to know what are the newest, hottest, coolest gift ideas for kids, Moms, Dads, Grandparents, anybody!

Toys, games, electronics, clothing, personal care, even Christmas decorations, my readers want to know about the best of the best! Right, readers? Making the Holiday Gift Guide badge was my way of saying, okay, I know we still have Halloween and Thanksgiving to go, but I’m ready to start thinking about Christmas! As if the frost my husband had to scrape off his windshield before leaving for work this morning wasn’t already a sign of things to come…

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