A Wacky Christmas Journey

As the youngest in the family, Holden frequently gets hosed. Hollis's every move was diligently documented in a baby book and in scrap books. Holden's baby book is nonexistent. Hollis has enough stuffed animals to open his own Toys R Us. Holden has 5 or 6 that belong only to him. Hollis gets to help Mommy and Daddy in the kitchen and in the yard. Holden is pretty much limited to emptying the kitchen cabinets and pushing a wagon filled with sticks around the yard. Or pulling my flowers out of the pots. You know, whatever strikes his fancy.

So when PBN offered me the opportunity to review some new personalized books for children, I jumped at the chance to get a personalized book for Holden. When he's spent thousands of dollars in therapy sessions to get over the emotional havoc "second child syndrome" has wreaked, I can point to the book and say, "See, I did do some things just for you!" Because nothing says, "I love you just as much as your brother," like a free book. Right? Right?

Anyway, I went to the Printakid website, chose my book, and entered some personalized information about Holden. There are several books to choose from, including A Fantastic Birthday, In the Kingdom of Nevernight, Laughing All the Way to School, The Robots of Sedna, and In Giddyland. I chose A Wacky Christmas Journey. Then I entered Holden's name, hair color and style, skin tone, and eye color. The site also asked for my name, my husband's name, and the names of some of Holden's friends. I entered his cousins' names.

The book came quickly, it only took about 2 weeks, and is really quite cute. You can write a message to your child on the first page and mine, "To our little Hurricane Holden," got me all teary before I even read the book. Darn hormones. The story itself is a bit corny. It focuses on Sniffy the Wet Nosed Reindeer, Rudolph's brother. Sniffy sneezes on part of Santa's list of nice kids, losing Holden's name and the rest of the family.

Wanting to fix the mistake, Sniffy makes Holden tiny and drags him into a Christmas ornament and to the North Pole to fix the mistake. Along the way, they encounter a pink sea elephant and go on a bender in Santa's sleigh. Reading the book, I immediately thought of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (I just hope the Printakid authors haven't been out licking mushrooms.) But kids seem to love wacky stories and this one doesn't disappoint. Holden loved this book and his opinion is the most important one for this review.

The little boy in the book really does look like a cartoon version of Holden, with wavy blond hair and big brown eyes. Holden loved hearing his name over and over again on all the pages. Now, he loves to bring the book to us with a, "Want to read Holden!" The story nicely incorporates Mommy and Daddy, Hollis, Holden's cousins, and it teaches a lesson. It's a fun book, but ultimately the book is about the spirit of giving more than you receive.

The only disappointment was the CD. Each book can be ordered with an Audio CD to follow along. Unfortunately, we haven't received Holden's. Apparently we incorporated some names into the story that, unfortunately, Printakid doesn't have in their recorded database. So we'll probably receive the CD shortly after Christmas. I'm willing to bet 10 bucks the name that stumped them was Hollis. So once again, Holden gets hosed! If you're ordering a book for a child with an unusual name, be sure to give yourself a little extra time.

Despite the delay with the CD, I'm really happy with the Printakid gave us for Holden and I'm sure I'll be purchasing one or more of the books as gifts in the future.

Autolite Flareglo

Did you know that I'm paranoid?

Seriously, I've talked about this on my other blog. I'm constantly picturing the worst case scenario for pretty much everything. Those Worst Case Scenario books? Were written for people like me. I'm convinced that my car will break down in the middle of nowhere on a dark highway. I'll have no cell phone, two kids in the car, and will be rear ended by a kamikaze semi driver.

So when PBN offered me the opportunity to review the Autolite Flareglo, I jumped at the chance. The Flareglo is an alternative to the standard flares found in emergency car kits. Those flares? Don't last very long. I don't know about you, but the last time I called a tow truck it took 45 minutes to show up. And I was on the interstate, not in the middle of nowhere. I want something that will alert drivers for longer than 15 to 20 minutes.

The Flareglo is a reusable safety lite that operates on 2 AAA batteries. Two Flareglos came in the package I received. 1 should be placed 10 feet behind the car and the other 100 feet behind the car. They're visible for 500 feet and rapidly blink.

T and I tried ours out in the back 40 of our yard and it definitely works well and was quite visible. I love the blinking feature. It's much more noticeable than a flare placed on the ground and I love the fact that the Flareglo will last a minimum of 12 hours. And if I'm trapped in a snow storm for 2 days? I can simply replace the batteries. (Let's just forget the fact that this area of Virginia doesn't see much snow. I told you I was paranoid.)

The Flareglo is now in the trunk of my car just waiting for my next worst case scenario. And I'll be buying some for my husband's truck, because I worry about him too.

That Baby DVD

I know I've mentioned in the past that my 3 year old knows the lyrics to "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes. While it is a fantastic song and a necessary part of my children's cultural education, I'm not ignorant of the fact that a song about drug use might be a tad bit inappropriate for the preschool set. "Ya think?" as Hollis would say. (OK, I admit he also got that from me.)

Enter the That Baby DVD and That Baby CD. I recently had the opportunity to review the set for the Parent Bloggers Network. The music is mostly performed by Stephanie Schneiderman and her sisters, Lisa and Kim. Ms. Schneiderman has a wonderful, melodic voice that I could listen to all day. The CD and DVD cover songs like "Inch by Inch," made popular by Donovan and "These are the Days," made popular by 10,000 Maniacs.

The That Baby CD is great. The kids love bopping to the songs, but let's face it. The most important listener is me. I love the music. The kids like the peppier songs like "Inch by Inch," but I love the more mellow songs. In fact, the videos for "Sunday Sun," and "Songbird" on the That Baby DVD, make me cry every. single. time. I really wish I could embed their promo video for you, but you can hear samples of the music and get a feel for the DVD on the That Baby DVD site.

You can get a 20% discount on the That Baby CD and That Baby DVD with the code PBN. That Baby DVD also has a no questions asked, money back guarantee. But trust me, you won't need it. You'll love the music and video as much as your kids will.

Frankly, I'm just relieved that Hollis may start singing "Inch by Inch" in preschool instead of "Lose Yourself" by Eminem. What are you still doing here? Go check it out!

3-2-1 Blast Off!

I love the Discovery Channel Store. They always have the coolest toys, for grown ups and children. In fact, my husband has a robot and a remote control helicopter from the store sitting in our sun room right now. We've both been eying the talking globe for some time, trying to figure out just how old the boys need to be before we can justify buying it for ourselves the kids.

So when PBN gave me the opportunity to review one the Discovery Store's latest pre-school toys, I was thrilled! Discovery Store didn't disappoint me. Paz's Lift-Off Rocket is pretty cool.

The rocket comes with 4 animal astronauts, a moon crater, and lunar module. When you push the red button on the handle, ground control counts down to lift off, the lower portion of the rocket lights up and then the rocket "lifts off." In flight, the button makes propulsion noises.

The interior of the rocket also has a cargo bay, living area and, of course, space for 2 pilots. My kids love, not just launching the rocket, but pretending to be living on the moon. Well, Hollis pretends and Holden chews on the astronauts and tries to steal the lunar module from his brother.

The doors to the rockets do come off, but they're intended to do so and pop back in easily. The doors really need to pop off to keep kids from breaking them off during play, so don't be concerned if one pops off on your child. Hollis insisted it was "broken" the first time it happened, but now he just pops the doors back into place.



If you're sick of toys that your kids just watch, the toys that don't require interaction, this is a nice compromise. It has a bit of flash and show (with the lift off noises and lights), but your kids will really need their imaginations to bring this toy to life. My kids have been playing with this toy for 2 months now and they still love it, as does every. single. kid. that comes over to play.

Looking for a good holiday gift? This fits the bill. I know I wouldn't hesitate to give it to another child as a gift. The rocket retails for $39.95 at the Discovery Channel Store.

HP Photosmart Compact Photo Printer

I take far too many pictures. I've taken more than 5000 photos since Hollis was born a little over 3 years ago. That averages out to about 4-5 every day for his entire life.

That's the wonder of digital photography. You can take a million photos and just print out the best ones instead of just praying that at least 1 photo on your roll of film came out all right.

But if you're anything like me you no longer have time to print out those "best" photos. I'm a scrapbooker. So for the first 9 months of Hollis's life I diligently printed out photos and created original scrapbook pages for each milestone in his infanthood. But when Hollis was about 9 months old, I really entered the throes of my second pregnancy and the paper scrapbook fell by the wayside. Hollis's scrap book stops at 9 months and Holden's never really got started.

So when PBN offered me the chance to review the new HP Photosmart Compact Photo Printer, I think I hurt my finger I replied to that email so quickly. I received the printer, a starter package with a color ink cartridge, an extra ink cartridge, several sheets of 5x7 HP photo paper and 2 photo books, 1 in a 5x7 and 1 8x10.

I must admit, I loved the photo book idea before I even tried out the printer. The pages of the photo book are actually HP photo paper, so you can print a photo or a scrapbook page out on your printer and pop it into the photo book. Voila. Instant scrapbook. I already create digital scrapbook pages and have printed out many as gifts, but in the past I had to mount each printed page in a scrapbook. I'm looking forward to making my gift giving a little easier in the future with the HP photo books.

The printer itself is compact and easy to set up. Mine is currently set up on the buffet in my kitchen so I can print and supervise the kids. I don't have mine hooked up to my computer. I just copy what I want to a memory card from my laptop and pop the card into the printer. Or, you can the HP photo printer up to your computer as you would any printer.

The printer also offers some editing options and a touch screen with menus that can be easily accessed with your finger or a stylus. I used the stylus to put my handwriting on some photos, something I really can't do with my usual photo editor - the tried and true Adobe Photoshop. I really thought that was the neatest thing about the editing capabilities of the printer, but you can also eliminate red eye, make photos black and white or sepia, add borders or graphics, soften photos, or use the "skinny" setting. Seriously. It can make you look skinny.

(Did I just hear women all over America whipping out their credit cards to buy this thing?)

The one problem I noticed with editing directly on the printer, is that there is no way to save your changes to a disk or your computer. Or if there is, I can't seem to figure out how to do it. And I'm notorious for refusing to seek help unless I'm desperate. I wrote on a cute picture of Holden with the stylus, but I can't figure out how to get my edits saved so that I can show them to you in a jpg format. That's frustrating.

With the exception of handwriting with the stylus and the "skinny" effect, I can do all of the editing options in Photoshop. I like editing my photos and I doubt I'll stop using Photoshop. But if you have no patience for that and want to take a memory card directly from your camera and print out photos easily and with a little editing, you can do it with the HP Photo Printer and it seems easy and fast.

The true test of this printer for me was the photo quality. Yeah, the editing features are neat, but I want something with amazing color that I don't have to order or take to a printer. Here, the HP Photo Printer did not disappoint me. The print quality of the photos is excellent. I printed out several photos of mine that I love, with lots of color, just to test it out.

This photo looked great. I couldn't tell that I had printed it at home. It looked professional.

The printer also comes with the HP Photosmart Essential software. The software catalogs all of your photos so you can easily access them by date or folder, allows you to do simple edits and create projects, like photo cards and calendars.

I tried out an add-on the Photosmart Essential software downloaded from the HP website to create simple scrapbook pages. It was fairly easy to use and gave me templates I could just drag and drop photos into. I can then print out the scrapbook pages and pop them into the HP photo books.

Again, I had a problem with saving my scrapbook creations and edits in a usable format. I like to have my scrapbook creations in jpg format so that I can share them online, on my blog, or print them out anywhere I like. The HP software saves everything thing in a format unique to the HP software and I can't for the life of me figure out how to convert the files. While that might be part of HP's plan to get people to use their printer or online services, I don't like it. I want my unique creations and edits in a universal format and I don't want to be limited in how I can use them.

The software does, however, save smaller sized preview icons of projects in jpg format that I found by browsing through my files. Here's an example of a holiday template from the HP software, although this isn't a finished product because I'm not even sure how this was saved by the software. But it gives you an idea of what you can do.

The Photosmart Essential software probably isn't something I'll use on a regular basis simply because I'm a dedicated Photo Shop user. I need more flexibility and options than the simple editing allowed by the HP software.

Seriously, HP? In a software update you should really consider letting us save edits, creations, and scrapbook pages in jpg or gif format. I'd be much happier.

As a veteran digital scrapbooker and Photoshop user, I don't think HP's software offers me many advantages. But if you're new to editing your digital photos or if you'd like to get started with something simple and easy to use, you'll like the HP software. The printer, however, I know I'll continue to use often. I've already gone out and stocked up on more HP printer cartridges and photo paper.

You can buy the HP Photo Printer here for $129. The Photo Books are on sale for 20% off. If you're looking for a nice quality photo printer that isn't too expensive, this is the one. The rich, sharp color and low price make it a great holiday gift bargain.