You can honor mom by capturing her favorite moments in a personalized photo book. You can even archive her favorite family recipes! Snapfish offers photo books with many creative layouts and a range of sizes including 8×11, 8×8, 5×7 and even 4×6 flip books, great for all occasions. And one of the really cool features of the photo books is the custom cover which lets you stretch a picture across the entire front cover (see the image with this post).

And guess what? I reccently discovered that Snapfish has integrated with Flickr!! This makes the photo book making process even easier. I am an amateur photographer of sorts — I’ve taken a few classes and I have 17,000 (no, that’s not a typo) pictures in my Flickr photo stream. I used to have time to have those photos printed and then spent hours creating beautiful scrapbooks, but with Baby No. 3, scrapbooking went out the window. Now whenever I want to turn my pictures into a scrapbook, I can create a Snapfish photobook and load the pictures right from my Flickr photostream.  I no longer have to upload my pictures to two different places (Flickr, where I store ALL my digital photos and Snapfish for my photo books and photo gifts). Of course, you can still upload your pictures to Snapfish the “old fashioned” way!

Here are some other great Mother’s Day Gift ideas on Snapfish:

Leather bracelet with photo charm – Put mom’s favorite picture on a bracelet so she can wear it every day.

Sterling silver swinging locket – Looking for a gift she’ll cherish forever? Snapfish’s new sterling silver necklace with swinging locketallows you to display mom’s favorite photo in a locket that is sealed in a waterproof, UV-resistant coating to protect the image. Sent in a gift box, Snapfish does the wrapping for you.

Keepsake Box – Perfect for keeping all her prized possessions in one place, this beautiful keepsake box is made of dark-stained wood and features one glossy photo tile, measuring 5″ X 2¼” deep.

Hardcover Journal – Inspire mom by helping her record her special day and year with a personalized journal by Paper Coterie. The journal features a photo and several custom designs she’ll flip for.

Photo greeting card – Who doesn’t love a thoughtful greeting card? But why settle for one you can buy anywhere?  Instead, show your appreciation for mom by sending her a personalized photo greeting card on her special day. Snapfish offers a myriad of selections with more than 3,000 designs. You can even create a recordable greeting card to show mom how much you care, whether she’s close or far.

Now here’s the best part about Snapfish and Mother’s Day — Snapfish wants to give one of my lucky readers a $50 gift credit to use on a product of her choice.

Giveaway Guidelines:

To enter the contest, you MUST subscribe to Lipstick to Crayons (subscribe button in upper right corner) and then comment below that you did so (or leave a comment telling me you’re already a subscriber). After completing this mandatory first entry method, you can gain additional entries by doing any or all of the following (but be sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do):

1. Blog about this contest.
2. Tweet this giveaway on Twitter (You can tweet daily, but leave a comment for each time you do so).
3. Add Lipstick to Crayons to your blogroll or my button to your sidebar
4. Become a fan of Lipstick to Crayons on Facebook.
5. Post a link to this contest on your Facebook page.

This giveaway closes at 11:59 p.m. Central time May 2, 2011. Be sure to include a valid email address with each of your entries. The winner will be randomly chosen via random.org and will be notified via email and announced on this post.

If the winner does not claim the prize by May 5, 2011, she will forfeit the prize to an alternate winner who will be drawn at random.

USA residents only.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED. CONGRATULATIONS TO NICOLE, COMMENT #7.

Posts like this

• $35 Snapfish Giveaway and Back to School Fun – CLOSED
• Customized Puzzles for $12.95 at Snapfish
• $50 Snapfish Gift Certificate Giveaway/Help Fight Breast Cancer – CLOSED
• I’m a Snapfish Select!
• Snapfish Helps Raise Money & Awareness for Breast Cancer, Coupon Code

Our favorite of the new books is Moon Dreams by Ruth Martin, magnificently illustrated by Olivier Latyk. My almost 3-year-old is fascinated by the moon and calls it “my moon.” This book is about a young girl named Luna who is equally entralled with the moon and who makes it her personal quest to find out where the moon goes during the daytime. It’s a hardcover book suggested for ages 4 to 7, but my 3-year-old demands it be read to her nightly.

A Bedtime for Bear by Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton is a fun book about a bear who is VERY particular about absolute quiet in his house in order for him to go to sleep. His charasmatic friend, Mouse, comes over for a sleepover and doesn’t quite honor his promises to be extremely quiet. It’s an adorable book about friendship, as well as bedtime routines. The book is suggested for ages 5 to 7, but again, my almost 3-year-old loves it.

Both books would make delightful Christmas presents for any young child or expectant parent. Click on the buttons below to purchase the books.

Posts like this

• Potty-training Giveaway! – CLOSED
• Grandparent Handbook Giveaway
• Tiny Baby Jesus Book Giveaway – Closed
• New Chicken Soup for the Soul Book Giveaway
• Warren Delivers Another Great Read in Christian Literature Genre

LOVE IT! Can you say “Just in time for holiday shopping”? And you don’t have to provide any credit card information to get your three months free membership of Amazon Prime. It will simply expire after three months (you might get an email telling you it’s going to expire, and encouraging you to renew), but your Amazon Mom membership benefits will continue.

Other benefits of the Amazon Mom membership include:

• Upgrades to One-Day (overnight) Shipping for just $3.99 per item.
• Option to earn additional months (up to one year) of FREE Two-Day Shipping for every $25 spent on Baby products in a single order.
• An additional 15 percent discount on top of the standard 15 percent off select diapers and wipes, bringing the total discount to 30 percent when using Subscribe & Save delivery.
• Many more exclusive discounts and offers, tailored to a family’s interests, delivered right to their inbox.

Signing up is simple. Just visit Amazon Mom and provide some information about your family. Please note that the program is not just limited to moms—primary caretakers are eligible too.  Members also have the opportunity to connect with other parents on community discussion boards to share product information, tips and techniques.

I’ve already used my Amazon Prime membership to order two books on Amazon. When the shipping is free, it is one of the most frugal ways to shop!!

Posts like this

• Free Shipping Wars – Don’t Pay for Shipping!
• Step 2 Easel for $26 Shipped!!
• $10 JC Penney Coupon Code Plus Free Shipping
• Free Shipping at Disney Store – and stuff on clearance!
• $10 off $10 purchase at Famous Footwear

Adoramapix photo books are printed on actual photo paper (Fujifilm Crystal Archive Album) so they have unbelievable color and detail, and the hard cover is thicker and the binding sturdier than any of my other photo books. Their unique binding system allows every page spread to lay flat without any gutter or unsightly seam to separate the pages. And you have complete control of what goes on the cover of the book — your photo can go edge to edge, front to back or spine.

When I made my first photobook at Adoramapix, I used one of the custom themes because I thought that would be the easiest way to learn the process. I made my second book “from scratch”  in that I designed it without a pre-designed theme , and I have to say I think I like that option better. But even if you choose a pre-designed theme, you can manipulate everything within that theme, so it’s still very customizable. Either way, here’s the basic process for making a book on Adoramapix and the things I like about the process:

Create a free account.

Choose Photo book and then Create a Book.

Choose the size (portrait, landscape or square, with sizes ranging from 6×4 to 12×12, 14 pages to 76 pages, prices ranging from $12.95 to 189.95)

Choose a theme or “build your own” from a blank book. (There are 39 different themes, including Baby Boy, Baby Girl, Wedding, Autumn, Gallery, Love, Portfolio, Guest Book, Recipe, Seniors, etc.)

Upload your pictures. I love that you can upload your pictures directly from Flickr, Picasa or your computer.

If you chose a blank book, you can now begin choosing backgrounds, stickers and banners. Or you can place your photos on pages and then go back and choose those things. If you chose a theme, you can simply begin putting your pictures into the pre-designated places for photos, or you can manipulate some of the layouts and designs to better suit your needs.  There is nothing you cannot change in the pre-designed themes.

Here are some other features to love about the Adoramapix process:

• You can easily crop your photos and pan your photos so that just the part you like shows up on the page.

• It’s super easy to add borders and frames around your photos, and you simply drag a slider to increase or decrease the point size of those borders and frames, or click on a color box to change the color.

• You can easily rearrange photos on pages, and rearrange the pages within the book.

• With just the click of a button, you can change the page background colors, and you can add stickers over the top of photos or click the “send backward” button to have them print behind a photo.

• You can copy and paste page layouts that you like, so that you don’t have keep “re-creating” a page style throughout the book.

• If  you discover as you are making your book that you need to add more photos, it is very easy to add pictures to the gallery with the click of a button.

• Adding text boxes is easy (click a button) and manipulating the text size, color, text box background and text orientation is even easier (click buttons on a text toolbar).

I was a little reluctant to share pictures of my photo book here for two reasons — 1) the photos I used to make the book were taken from very far away, without a flash, inside a natatorium, so the photo quality is less than perfect, and 2) Taking pictures of “less than perfect” pictures inside a book should be left for professional photographers.  Still, I wanted to share the book with you to give my excitement about the final product more validity. The book, which I made for my teenager whose high school swim team won state, is one of her prized possessions!

Downsides?:  The only downside I found to this program is that your book must have one of the pre-established number of pages (14, 26, 38, 50 or 76). You can’t have 21 pages, or 16 page, etc. In some other programs I’ve used, you can start with a “pre-determined” number of pages, but you can add pages one at a time. So, this is where the feature of being able to add photos to your gallery easily comes in handy.

Now, if you’d like to make a fantastic photo book (size of your choosing) at Adoramapix, enter the contest below:

Giveaway Guidelines

To win, visit Adoramapix then come back here and tell me  in the comment section below what on that landing page makes you want to try their photo book product.

Receive additional entries by doing any/all of the following, but be sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do:

1. Blog about this contest
2. Subscribe to my mailing list/RSS feed
3. Tweet this giveaway on Twitter
4. Favorite Lipstick to Crayons on Technorati
5. Stumble this post
6. Add Lipstick to Crayons to your blogroll or my button to your sidebar
7. Become a fan of Lipstick to Crayons on Facebook.

This giveaway closes at 11:59 p.m. Central time May 28, 2010.  Be sure to include a valid email address with each of your entries. Winner will be randomly chosen via random.org and will be notified via email and announced on this post.

If winner does not claim prize by June 1, 2010, he/she will forfeit the prize to alternate winner who will be drawn at random.

U.S. &  Canada residents only, please.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED. CONGRATS TO KELLIE C., COMMENT #16.

Posts like this

• $50 Snapfish Giveaway for Mother’s Day – Check out the Photobooks! – CLOSED
• $35 Snapfish Giveaway and Back to School Fun – CLOSED
• Snapfish Helps a Community, Gives You 50 Percent Discount On Photobooks
• Memorial Quilt to Honor my Father’s Memory
• Spread some “Snappiness” and Get $5 Credits to Spend on Snapfish

These stories in this book are divided into these subcategories:  How We Met, Adventures in Dating, Meant to Be, The Proposal, The Wedding, Keeping the Love Alive, Lessons in True Love, Happily Ever After, Gifts from the Heart, and Love Everlasting. Each story is introduced with a “love quote,” such as “Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.” — John Barrymore

You can read a full description of the book here.

Now, since everyone loves a love story, I’m giving away three copies of this book. Enter the contest below:

Giveaway Guidelines

If you want to win one of these books, leave a comment below briefly describing your own favorite love story.

Receive additional entries by doing any or all of the following, but be sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do:

1. Subscribe to my mailing list/RSS feed.
2. Blog about this contest.
3. Tweet this giveaway on Twitter (you can tweet daily if you want, but make sure you leave a comment each time you do).
4. Favorite Lipstick to Crayons on Technorati.
5. Stumble this post.
6. Add Lipstick to Crayons to your blogroll or my button to your sidebar.
7. Become a fan of Lipstick to Crayons on Facebook.

This giveaway closes at 11:59 p.m. Central time  March 2, 2010.  Be sure to include a valid email address with each of your entries. Contest open to United States residents only. Winners will be randomly chosen via random.org and will be notified via email and announced on this post.

If winners do not claim prize by March 3, 2010, they will forfeit the prize to an alternate winner. This contest is closed. Congratulations to Katy, comment #6, Marc, comment #11 and Amanda, comment #14.

Posts like this

• Book Giveaway – Chicken Soup for the Dog-lover’s Soul
• $191 Kymaro Beauty Products 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway!! – CLOSED
• Freschetta Pizza Giveaway and Sweepstakes for a Ford Hybrid – CLOSED
• AboutOne Family Management Subscription Giveaway (5 Winners) – CLOSED
• Made My Holiday Cards on Snapfish; 20 Percent Coupon Code! $50 Snapfish Giftcard Giveaway

What I am giving away is an adorable potty chair and a set of two new books by Samantha Berger — Princess Potty and Pirate Potty.

Both books provide a helpful, step-by-step story that introduces girls and boys to the concept of toilet training. Pirate Potty is a pirate-themed, toilet-training book that is fit for the little swashbuckler in your life!  It includes a pirate’s hat and reward stickers! Princess Potty follows the same theme…a toilet-training book that is fit for the Royal Highness in your life and the book also is complete with a tiara and reward stickers! I’ve read the book several times and am preparing to stay home for a few days and try the book/reward system on my rather stubborn 2-year-old (who, I might add, tarnished my mother-in-law’s potty-training success rate over the Christmas holiday). So, I’ll have to let you know how it works for me.

In the meantime, if you’d like to win a set of the books and a potty, see the contest below. The grand prize winner will get  the Boon Potty Bench, valued at $34.99 (pictured to the right) and a set of both books. Two other winners will get a set of both books.

Giveaway Guidelines

Leave a comment below telling me about the little one you are trying to potty train.

Receive additional entries by doing any/all of the following, but be sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do:

1. Blog about this contest
2. Subscribe to my mailing list/RSS feed
3. Tweet this giveaway on Twitter (you can tweet daily if you want, but make sure you leave a comment each time you do).
4. Favorite Lipstick to Crayons on Technorati
5. Stumble this post
6. Add Lipstick to Crayons to your blogroll or my button to your sidebar
7. Become a fan of Lipstick to Crayons on Facebook

This giveaway closes at 11:59 p.m. Central time Feb. 19.  Be sure to include a valid email address with each of your entries. Contest open to United States residents only. Winners will be randomly chosen via random.org and will be notified via email and announced on this post.

If winners do not claim prize by Feb.  22, 2010, they will forfeit the prize to an alternate winner.

This contest is closed. Congrats to Stephanie V, comment #13 — our grand prize winner. Also, congrats to the winners of the sets of two books: Danielle, comment #32 and Rosey, comment #140.

Posts like this

• Appropriate Reading Material?
• Must-have Bedtime Books
• Step 2 Easel for $26 Shipped!!
• Pampers and Liz Lange Diaper Clutch Giveaway – CLOSED
• Book of Love Stories Giveaway – Closed

Leapfrog has long been a leader in creating educational but FUN toys, and now they’ve gone and created one that even a two-year-old can enjoy. The Tag system makes it fun for toddlers to connect words with pictures and other thoughts. By pressing the Tag Junior Book Pal onto the pages of specially designed books, the words and pictures come to life.

 The Tag Jr. is easy for a toddler to use because all she has to do is touch the  book pal (which fits perfectly in a toddlers chubby little hand) anywhere on the page and she will be rewarded with a response. Each Tag Jr. book has a theme and focuses on a skill.

The Tag Jr. system is geared toward young preschoolers ages 2-4. Leapfrog
also lets you create an account at LeapFrog’s Learning  Path site where you can track your child’s learning progress online and download and print free activities to compliment your child’s Tag Jr. books.

LeapFrog toys are always fun-forward and engaging with educational benefits and skill-building fundamentals that last well beyond the holiday season. In other words, they’re invaluable.

Upsides:

• Easy for a toddler to use
• Great learning tool
• Encourages reading
• Portable – great toy for road trips and hotel stays
• Reasonably priced

 Downside:

• The process of downloading the audio from the Leapfrog site to your Tag Jr. Book Pal was a little tricky for me, but there is lots of online support on the site.

You can buy the Tag Junior here for $24.99 and it comes with a book. You can buy extra books here and here.

Also from Leapfrog is the Text & Learn. Tech-savvy preschoolers on your shopping list can imitate Mom and Dad (Big Sister in our house) with this durable, just-for-kids learning PDA.  Games focus on letter recognition, shape matching, and QWERTY keyboard skills, allowing preschoolers to exchange text messages with Scout, check Scout’s planner, and explore in a pretend browser mode. You can buy it  here for $21.99.

Posts like this

• LeapFrog Holiday Online Specials
• We’re Pleasantly Puzzled
• $50 ProFlowers Giveaway for Mother’s Day – CLOSED
• Christian Jewelry Made Incredibly Stylish – and Custom Pieces, too!
• Company Kids Hooded Towel Review & Giveaway – Closed

“The Grandparents Handbook” by Elizabeth LaBan offers modern grandparents a variety of fun pastimes and educational projects to share with their grandchildren. The book also provides a refresher chapter on various baby-related tasks such as changing a diaper, swaddling a newborn, and giving kids a bath. Plus it includes some advice on respecting your children’s decisions on how they raise their children. (The full book title is “The Grandparents Handbook: Activities, Tips, How-Tos, and All-Around Fun.”)  

The book is divided into four sections:

• Bringing Up Baby: A Grandparent’s Refresher Course
• Indoor and Outdoor Fun and Games
• Crafts and Cooking
• Sharing and Exploring the World Together

The Grandparents Handbook features such activities as:

• How to Baby—and Kid—Proof Your Home (page 30)
• How to Handle Toddler Tantrums (page 50)
• Holding a Backyard Olympics (page 60)
• Planting a Fairy and Goblin Garden (page 85)
• Creating Your Own Ice Cream Cake (page 107)
• Making Homemade Pickles (page 109)
• Planning a Special Meal Together (page 178)
• Creating Your Family Tree (page 180)
• And much more!

With dozens of interactive projects and featuring whimsical illustrations, this book will lead grandparents down surprising paths of discovery as they teach the youngest generation about family, friendship, and the world around them. It is the perfect gift for modern grandparents and grandparents-to-be!

The book retails  here  for about $12 but one lucky Lipstick to Crayons reader can win the book for free by entering the contest below. (Don’t count on this contest to deliver the book to the winner by Christmas  — it’s not happening.

Giveaway Guidelines:

Tell me in the comment section below why you want to win The Grandparents Handbook.

Receive additional entries by doing any/all of the following, but be sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do:

1. Blog about this contest
2. Subscribe to my mailing list/RSS feed
3. Tweet this giveaway on Twitter (you can tweet daily if you want, but make sure you leave a comment each time you do).
4. Favorite Lipstick to Crayons on Technorati
5. Stumble this post
6. Add Lipstick to Crayons to your blogroll or my button to your sidebar
7. Become a fan of Lipstick to Crayons on Facebook
   

This giveaway closes at 11:59 p.m. Central time Dec. 22. Be sure to include a valid email address with each of your entries. Contest open to United States residents only. Winner will be randomly chosen via random.org and will be notified via email and announced on this post.

If winner does not claim prize by Dec. 26, 2009, he/she will forfeit the prize to an alternate winner.

Posts like this

• Tiny Baby Jesus Book Giveaway – Closed
• $50 ProFlowers Giveaway for Mother’s Day – CLOSED
• Children’s Products (Toy) Award Winners & Giveaway
• Contest to Win a Trip Home
• Maternity Dress Giveaway and Coupon Code – CLOSED

Dean Mandis, a father of two students in the Rockwood School District (also the school district of my children) addressed the district’s school board last week regarding his concerns that his daaughter was being taught the concepts of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) as alternatives to the dating system that has been in place for HUNDREDS OF CENTURIES!

“Introducing B.C.E./C.E. in conjunction with B.C./A.D. in the classroom is to deny the historical basis of the dating system and ultimately leads to confusion,” Mandis told the board. Mandis said this teacher’s decision was “irresponsible” and possibly “a dangerous and slippery slope.” (quoted from Tim Townsend’s article in the Post and on stltoday.com.)

Apparently, according to a source in the article, the movement to use C.E. and B.C.E. in western academia began in the 1980s. When something similar happened in Kentucky in 2006, Christians fought it and the effort to use the new dating system disappeared. Gotta hand it to you, KY! (that’s for my husband and his relatives.)

Not surprisingly, the same textbook companies that have been re-writing history for the last few decades to make it more politically correct and less offensive are at least partially to blame for this effort. Craig Larson, Rockwood School District superintendent, wrote this explanation  on his blog:

“Within the last 10-15 years, CE/BCE has started to appear in student textbooks, usually along with AD/BC and sometimes with just one or the other mentioned. Teachers make sure that students are aware of both designations so they are literate when they encounter either notation.”

I understand the textbook companies desire to sell textbooks. When I was a newspaper reporter, people used to accuse us of writing things “just to sell newspapers.”  I’d say, “We need to sell newspapers, folks. This isn’t a not-for-profit operation.”  But that didn’t mean we had license to write things that were false. I understand that you can probably sell more textbooks if your books are vanilla enough to not offend ANYONE, that doesn’t make them accurate.

I’ll never forget when my oldest came home from kindergarten telling me that the pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving to thank the Native Americans (see, I can be PC) for helping them survive in the new country. Seriously? While the pilgrims may very well have owed a debt of gratitude to any Native Americans who helped them learn to live in this untame land, it was NOT the Indians who they were thanking that first Thanksgiving. Still, when I investigated, that was the message of the book my daughter’s teacher was reading to her class. No mention of thanking God on Thanksgiving — just the natives.

As Larson pointed out, Rockwood School District doesn’t write textbooks, and the district has a responsibility to help our students understand dates in any way they may be presented. But I’m with Mandis — it’s a slippery slope. I think the district should reject any textbooks that teach an inaccurate history of Thanksgiving, and then the textbook companies won’t print falsities about that holiday.

Our dating system shouldn’t offend anyone. B.C. doesn’t stand for ”Before Christ, the one true God, Son of Man, Risen Savior.” And the newer system of dating doesn’t change anything — the calendar is still measured in terms of the birth of  Jesus Christ. So let’s stop erasing God from our history.

Larson says the school district doesn’t have a “policy” on dates. Maybe we should have a policy and that policy should be that we will continue to teach our children the principles upon which this country was founded in regard to everything, including the dating system. If you are a Rockwood parent and you feel strongly about this, a group of parents have started a petition on the topic. You can sign it here.

Posts like this

• On Christmas, I Always Wonder if She Knew
• Moms & Mommy Bloggers — You’re Invited Into This Amazing Story
• No More Spelling Tests?!!

Posts like this

• Vampire Movie Prizepack Giveaway
• The HELP Released Tday on Blu-ray, DVD
• Sorcerer’s Apprentice on Blu-ray and DVD
• Upload Video for Chance to Win $10,000 for Charity
• Leapyear Prize Pack Giveaway