Jenny and I never know what to get our grandma for Christmas… all the cousins typically fight over who gets to make the photo calendar each year, because we know Grandma loves to look at her adorable grandchildren.

This year, when we heard about personalized ornaments from CafePress, we knew we had the perfect gift for Grandma. The software on the site is incredibly easy - just pick from a wide assortment of designs, upload a picture, and voila, a gift Grandma is sure to love.

Because really, who wouldn’t want to show off these adorable grandchildren?

Wait! We’re not ready yet. (And what? We are her adorable grandchildren!)

Ok let’s try this again.

That one would be perfect… if we were the poster children for Blindness Awareness Day.

Hmm… clearly the pictures of Jenny and me together aren’t going to work, so let’s see if we can get the perfect shot of Jenny all by herself.

Jenny! This is serious! Please try to pay attention.

Yeah that is not going to work either. You are not very good at this.

Maybe Grandma is a Twilight fan… how about this one?!?

Ok I am going to have nightmares for months. The woman is 84 years old, I don’t think she can withstand that sight.

Clearly Jenny and I are a lost cause. Perhaps we should turn to the next generation for the perfect ornament. We’ll have Kate go first.

She takes after her mother. And her cousin.

Moving on… maybe Sammy is better at this.

Yes, yes… that is more like it. How about this pretty girl?

That would make any Christmas tree more beautiful. But this…

That smile is brighter than… something really bright. Which is obviously not me.

As you can see, Jenny and I had a lot of fun creating our own ornaments on CafePress, and we think you will too. So if you’re in the market for a last-minute gift for Grandma, a way to commemorate your baby’s first Christmas, or the perfect gift for your Twilight-loving little cousin, make sure to check out CafePress for yourself!

Order by the end of the day tomorrow December 15 to make the deadline for standard shipping, or by December 20 for premium shipping. And if you’re really behind the eight ball, you have until December 21 to order using one-day shipping!

Remember that?

I know I do… and now Kmart is bringing back the Blue Light Special! Special offers run every Saturday and Sunday, on everything from electronics, to jewelry, to items for your home - all at Kmart Bluelight Special prices! There are over 40 great Bluelight Specials throughout the weekend in-store AND other great offers online at Kmart.com ONLY on Saturday and Sunday. 

To make it even better, Kmart is giving away a $50 gift card every day from 11/12 – 12/23! All you have to do to enter is tweet using #KmartBLS each day.

In addition to daily winners, everyone following @KmartDealsnNews on Twitter (as of 12/23/2009) will be entered for a chance to win a $500 Kmart Shopping spree!

Grand and First prize winners will be chosen at random from eligible followers of the @KmartDealsnNews Twitter account at the end of the sweepstakes. One (1) Grand Prize winner will receive a $500 Kmart gift card, and five (5) First Prize winners will receive a $100 Kmart gift card. Winners will be notified by direct message, and must be following @KmartDealsnNews.

Good luck!

***Congratulations to our winner, Trisha!***

I am very excited about this giveaway!

The nice folks at Breville sent me one of these blenders to review, and they are also going to give one to a lucky one of our readers!

Here’s what Breville says about the ikon Hemisphere LCD Blender:
– The blender’s Hemisphere Bowl/Blade system utilizes a large, semicircular shredding blade positioned to hug the uniquely shaped bowl. What does this mean for you? All of the ingredients placed into the blender will be shredded into fine, consistent, and most importantly, no surprising chunks.
– The blender has a special “Smoothie” button which is programmed to pause mid-cycle to achieve naturally aerated results with a velvety consistency. This features cuts out the need to add extra calories and thickening agents, such as yogurt.
– The blender features five speed settings, pulse function and two preset programs for ice crushing and smoothies, so no matter what you are blending, it has the perfect speed.
– The 54-ounce engineering grade borosilicate glass jar is designed to resist scratching, chipping and fogginess for optimal clarity. The baked enamel measurements provide for sharp viewing and accurate measurements.

Here’s what I say about it:
I love this thing. The only other blender I have ever owned was of the $25 variety, purchased off of our wedding registry. I very rarely used it, and when I did I always had a mess on my hands because it leaked like crazy, and it really didn’t even blend up ice very well. Which, in my opinion, is the whole point of a blender. The Breville does a great job on ice - I had to make sure to test it thoroughly, so I whipped up a batch or ten two of my famous low-cal margaritas, and it worked perfectly. It has several different settings that can be used to get the exact consistency you want - it even has a “snow” setting that I haven’t tried out yet but sounds very fun! I have used the “Smoothie” setting several times, and it does a great job blending frozen fruit and yogurt as well. The smoothie setting is cool because it starts, pauses, starts again throughout the one-minute cycle to let the chunky stuff settle to the bottom to make sure everything gets blended uniformly. Very cool!

The blender is heavy and sturdy, and I love the stainless steel look. It is also very easy to clean (a very important feature, in my opinion, because difficult to clean = never going to be used), and the pitcher part is dishwasher-safe.

I really love this blender, and many people who have come through my kitchen in the last couple months have commented on how nice it is… most notably, Jenny’s husband Bobby, who was disappointed that he can’t win this contest! It retails for $199, so it’s definitely a splurge, but for someone who makes daily smoothies or who cooks a lot, I think it would be well worth it.

So do you want to know how you can win one?
You can enter up to five times by doing the following:
1) Leave a comment here and tell us your favorite thing to make in a blender;
2) Tweet about this contest and leave a comment telling us you did so;
3) Follow Breville on Twitter and leave a comment telling us you did so;
4) Post about this contest on your Facebook page and leave a comment telling us you did so;
5) Become a fan of Breville on Facebook and leave a comment telling us you did so;
6) Subscribe to our feed and leave a comment telling us you did so.

The contest will end at 5:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday, November 11, and a winner will be chosen using random.org. Good luck, and a big thanks to Breville for this great contest!

And FYI, Kate and I have tested out various milkshake recipes and have found that Paula Deen’s is the best. We do not, however, recommend any milk shake recipes that do not contain ice cream as an ingredient. Consider yourself warned.

Emily and I are super-excited to bring you a great giveaway from Subway to help spread the word about their School Rewards program.  Now you can help your school earn cash by eating at Subway!  All you have to do is use a Subway gift card to make your Subway purchases.  Register online to link your Subway card to your school, and voila! - your school gets 2% back!

I love programs like this! (I have a Kroger gift card I re-load and use to make all my grocery purchases because they have a similar program!)  They are so great for schools.  To help spread the word about the program, your school just needs to call and register with the programll be sent free materials to help promote it! Subway sent Emily and me each a $10 Subway card so we could register it under Joshua’s and Kate’s schools and start earning cash back for them.  AND they sent us a whopping $100 gift card to give away to one of you lucky readers!!

Here’s how to enter to win:

1) Leave us a comment telling us what grade your kids are in, or how old they are if you don’t have school-agers.

2) Tweet about this giveaway on twitter and leave a separate comment with your tweet URL.  Make sure to include @SubwayEatFresh in your tweet!

3) Post about this giveaway with a link back on Facebook and leave a separate comment letting us know you did so.

Random.org will choose the lucky winner on Sunday November 8th!  Good luck and don’t forget to tell the folks at your kid’s school about Subway School Rewards!

***Contest is now closed. Congratulations to our winner, Greis!**

I love, love, love to read, but between work and school and blogging and my kids and life in general, I don’t always have a lot of time to do so. When the One2One Network asked me to review a book, though, I thought it would be a great excuse to make the time to read. And I’m glad I did!

“Once in a Blue Moon” by Eileen Goudge is a compelling story of two sisters who are reunited after a lifetime of separation. It’s a story of family ties and love and resilience. It is a light, easy read (which is perfect after a long day!). I really enjoyed the story, and I bet you will too.

I don’t want to say too much more because I hate, hate, hate when I find out all about a book before I read it - in fact I don’t even read the back of the book because I don’t want to know! I basically look at the Amazon review rating, and if it’s a good one I give the book a try. This book gets 4.5 stars on Amazon, a rating I completely agree with.

So before I ramble on and tell you the entire story in a much less eloquent way, let’s get on with the giveaway!

You can enter up to six times to win a copy of this book:
1) Leave a comment here and tell us the last book you read for pleasure (and not to your kids!);
2) Tweet about this contest and leave a comment telling us you did so;
3) Follow the author, Eileen Goudge, on Twitter and leave a comment telling us you did so;
4) Post about this contest on your Facebook page and leave a comment telling us you did so;
5) Become a fan of Eileen Goudge on Facebook and leave a comment telling us you did so;
6) Subscribe to our feed and leave a comment telling us you did so.

The contest will end at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3rd, and the winner will be chosen using random.org. Thanks to the One2One Network for this great giveaway!

Are you headed to a Halloween party this weekend? Or are you going to need a way to wind down after the craziness that is trick-or-treating? Either way, Halloween wine from Elk Creek will fit the bill!

Aren’t those bottles fun? I love them! And the wine is good too. I am not a wine expert by any stretch of the imagination (most of the wine I drink has a twist-off lid), but I do like wine and I love a good excuse to drink it. Last Saturday I had just that - one of my very closest friends came down to visit from Michigan, and she and I tried out the Bone Dry Red cabernet and the Ghostly White sweet mellow white (it had to be done for the sake of the blog, you know!). It had been ages…years… since we’d had the opportunity to just sit and talk, and with a couple bottles of wine added to the mix, it was a great night!

I really liked the cabernet and the sweet white wine. I’m not a chardonnay fan, and my resident chardonnay expert is currently pregnant, so I can’t vouch for it personally, but I really liked the others. The cab goes great with Donato’s pizza! (Yes we are super klassy, I know).

Here’s the official word on each kind of wine, according to wine blogger Michelle Lentz:
* My favorite wine of the bunch is the chardonnay. It’s lightly oaked and seemed to evoke bobbing for apples with some hints of citrus thrown in for good measure. It was barrel-fermented in French oak. I discovered, quite by accident, that it pairs excellently with kettle corn! Serve chilled.
* As for the Cabernet, I think it goes best with turkey and cranberry sauce. I did this as a turkey sandwich with cranberry dressing, but you get the idea. Again, I recommend serving it slightly chilled. The official tasting notes read “rich, well-oaked Cabernet Sauvignon brimming with fancy ripe black currant, roasted coffee bean and bitter dark chocolate flavors; all are framed in suave tannins.”
* The third wine is a combination of French American hybrid grapes, Vidal and Cayuga. It’s a sweeter and fruitier wine, so I chose to drink it on its own. Like the others, I recommend chilling the wine.

You know what else I like about this wine? It is made locally! Elk Creek Winery is in Kentucky, kind of in between Cincinnati, Louisville and Lexington. Who knew they made stuff other than bourbon down there?

So pick some up before Saturday - I may have to go get some more… after Jenny and I (and our husbands) take our kids trick-or-treating, I am going to need some down time! I bet I could even talk Jenny into a glass after that experience

The wines are available in coffin displays (is that awesome or what?) at the winery and Elk Creek stores, including Florence Mall, Rupp Arena, Fayette Mall, and the Mall at St. Matthews. The wines are also available at Kentucky Kroger Liquor stores, Party Town, Party Source, and Jungle Jim’s. If you just want to try a glass, you can find them at Outback Steakhouse and Montgomery Inn in Cincinnati, Dayton and Northern Kentucky.

Happy Halloween!

I am not exactly Suzy Homemaker, but I DO like to entertain.  I have a few special dishes that I like to make when we have people over or for the holidays, but making dinner every night does not excite me too much!

Despite my lack of domestic skills, I got a wild hair and agreed to review Carnation evaporated milk (they call it The Cooking Milk!) when they asked me to!  I had a girls night planned (Mary Kay party - woot woot!) and figured this would be a good excuse to get my HOSTESS on! My task was to make two recipes using Carnation - one of my own and one from their Carnation Holiday Recipe Guide.

Carnation sent me two coupons for a free can of their milk and a gift card to cover the cost of ingredients.  Here’s what I made!

This AMAZING potato recipe is from the Carnation Holiday Recipe Guide.  Potatoes mashed to creamy perfection with Carnation & sour cream and then baked with bacon and cheese - YUM!!  (I omitted green onions from the recipe ’cause I don’t like them.) This dish was SOOO GOOD!  All the girls at my party raved over it and I love, love, LOVED it. I will definitely make it again!

The recipe I made of my own was these chocolate bars made of cake mix, Carnation, chocolate morsels and white-chocolate morsels.  They were also a big hit!  And SO easy!

I had a great cooking experience with evaporated milk!  And I even used the fat-free Carnation in the cake bars and they were still delicious! (I used the 2% in the potatoes, I wanted to try both!)

I’ll be picking up more Carnation over the holidays ’cause I am definitely making those potatoes again soon!  Check out the Holiday Recipe Guide for great recipe ideas for every meal.

Happy cooking!

Since approximately the year 2001, I’ve been addicted to my DVR.  My hubby and I bought one when they first came out.  Recording TV shows and watching them whenever you want is THE AWESOME.

Except now, you can watch TV shows online whenever you want for FREE and THAT is THE AWESOMER!   I recently heard about a new site where you can do this, Fancast.

We had a channel lineup change on our cable right at the beginning of the new TV season, so my DVR messed up and didn’t record the season premiers of two of my favorite shows, Dollhouse (Don’t judge me! I LOOOOVE Joss Whedon!) and The Office.  I was SUPER-SAD when I discovered this, but thanks to Fancast, I don’t have to wait to see it in re-runs! I already watched them online. Yippee!

Fancast has a huge catalog of shows, even this morning I just checked and it has last night’s shows up already!   And it pulls content from over 100 sources, including Hulu, and even features celeb news, gossip, blogs, and more. (For instance OMG BFF I just found out Ashlee Simpson-Wentz was let go from Melrose Place thanks to Fancast. THE HORROR!  How will she afford $1000 booties for her rock star baby now!?)

I’m enjoying being able to watch my shows for free whenever I want online.  Hope you do too.

Oh, and BTW, Fancast isn’t paying me or anything for posting this. I hear I will be entered into a drawing to win a $100 gift card because I posted about them, but I don’t expect to win, however if I do, I am buying Mountain Dew for EVERYONE!  Except Ashlee Simpson-Wentz’s baby.

***This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to our winner, Emily! (hey great name!)***

How would you like to win one of these??

This AT&T Cordless Phone System has everything you need for your home - two handsets, an answering machine, and caller ID.

Here are the phone’s features:
# Dual-handset answering system with caller ID/call waiting
# Unsurpassed range
# Handset speakerphones
# Dedicated LED for central office voicemail
# Expandable up to 12 handsets
# Intercom between handsets
# Conference between an outside line and up to 2 handsets
# 50-name/number phonebook directory
# 50-name/number caller ID history
# Large lighted display on handset# An-key answer
# Selectable ring tones
# Up to 14 minutes of digital recording time
# Memo recording
# Voice prompts
# Table/wall mountable

I have been using this phone system for a month or so (AT&T sent me one for free, did you hear that FTC?), and I really like it. I like the handsets themselves - they are about the size and shape of a tv remote, and are much less bulky than the cordless phones I’m used to. I also have not hung up on someone by hitting the “end” button with my cheek, which used to happen all the time with my old phone (just ask Jenny!). I like having two handsets - it makes it very convenient to have the main system in our kitchen, but a spare handset in our bedroom (and they are interchangeable so you don’t have to worry about which one goes where!). You can access the messages on the answering machine from the extra handset, which is also nice. It’s very easy to use, and setting up the answering machine takes about 10 seconds.

My very, very favorite thing about this phone is that it doesn’t interfere at all with my baby monitor (or the baby monitor doesn’t interfere with it, one way or the other). My old phone got so staticky (is that a word?) that I couldn’t use it in any room between Sam’s room and ours… which is about half or house, so it was super annoying. I haven’t had one problem with static using this phone, and it is so nice.

The phone system retails for $59.99, and is available at telephones.att.com or at other major stores.

But one can be yours for FREE if you are the lucky winner of our contest! You can enter up to four times - here’s how:

1) Leave a comment on this post and tell us about the very first cordless phone you ever used (or any memory of those clunky old things);
2) Tweet about the contest and leave a comment here telling us you’ve done so;
3) Link to this post on your Facebook account and leave a comment here telling us you’ve done so;
4) Subscribe to our feed or tell us you already do subscribe.

This contest will end on October 26, 2009, at 5:00 p.m. and the winner will be chosen using random.org. Good luck!

*Contest closed* The winner is Night Owl Mama!

A few weeks ago my friends at Mom Select asked me if I wanted to review a new building toy, the Fisher Price TRIO, give one away to our readers, and offer my honest opinion of the toy.  Since I have a 5-year-old son, I was all “Sure! I’d love to!” because, seriously, FREE TOY!  When the TRIO came, Joshua was suuuuper-excited to open it.  I just let him go for it and observed him playing with it over the next couple of weeks.

He REALLY loves it. Honest-to-goodness.  The toy is challenging enough to be fun and keep him occupied but very do-able for a 5-year-old.  For instance, Joshua has built many of the pictures on the front of the box by himself, and he and my husband made a SWEET airplane together.  Here’s Joshua with the house he built:

Joshua has also made by himself, a really cool helicopter and a TRIO car, among other various wild and wacky creations.  He loves the set and I think we’ll be getting him an add-on set for Christmas so he can make even more cool and colorful designs.

Does the TRIO sound like it would be fun for your kiddo?  Well you have the chance to win one!  Here’s how to enter:

1) Leave a comment on this post telling us your favorite childhood toy.

2) Tweet about this contest on twitter or Facebook and leave a comment telling us you did so.

3) Subscribe to our feed and leave a comment saying you did (or already do subscribe!).