A super photo book deal!

I love making photo books for my kids of their adventures  - and they looove looking at books with pictures of themselves! So I was thrilled to find a deal on photo books at Artscow. I'd never heard of this site before, but I just created a book and placed my order and I'm so excited to see the result!

The difference with this site from ones I've used before (I've tried Shutterfly, Kulapix, and WalMart's photo book services) is that it makes it super easy to do a digital scrapbook style book, with loads of free "kits" that have full book layouts as well as all the patterns and embellishments you could desire. It's completely customizable with a drag and drop interface for both the layouts and your photos.

I found there was a bit of a learning curve (and you do need to install Microsoft's Silverlight if you don't already have it - also free, and available right there on the site from the Create page, it prompts you to install it), but overall I enjoyed the process. And you can't beat this deal:

a 99 cent photo book, including shipping!!

Use coupon code Z099BOOKK47EG 

(My order came to $1.07 Canadian) This includes 6x6" and 7x5" photo books. AWESOME. And great Christmas presents!! Go get one!

Expires Dec. 31, 2013 and limited to the first 20,000 orders. One per household.

Build A Bear Review

I never thought I would be impressed by Build a Bear. It's a weird concept and seemed totally gimmicky and lame.

If you haven't been (as I never had before today), here's how it works - you (for "you" assume you or your child, if your child is old enough) choose an unstuffed animal, you can choose a sound pack to put in it (for an extra fee), you take the animal to the fluff machine where a staff member fills it with blown-in stuffing. You can press the pedal to power the machine if you like. Once the animal is full, you choose a small heart to add to the animal. Then the staff pull the pre-stitched threads to close it up, and you can either take it home like that, or spend more money in the "boutique" on outfits, shoes and accessories (even small plastic branded wardrobes, ugh) for your stuffed animal. A little upsell attempt at the till to negotiate, as they tried to sell me some kind of mesh carrying bag. If you don't opt for the upsell, you can take it home in a printed house-shaped cardboard box (I opted out of that too - it would just go directly in the recycling).

All that sounds awful to me as I write it out.

But I had a $20 gift card and also a $5 off $25 printable coupon for Build a Bear (click the link to get your own coupon - not affiliated or anything, just sharing). So with $25 burning a hole in my pocket, we had to go. 

We took our 15.5 month old daughter there today, and here's the thing... she LOVED it. I mean, she was in a grouchypants, complainy mood (molars, I needn't say more). And the minute we went into the store it was all squeals of delight. She's in a phase where she adores stuffed animals, so it was really no surprise. She spent a great deal of time hugging and squealing at the unstuffed animals, armfuls at a time, until we spotted The One - a chocolate lab much like our beast of a dog, Cadbury.

Pure joy!

The dog was $27 and we did not choose a sound pack or any outfits or accessories. Total cost to me after tax and my coupon and gift card? $3.10. She went to bed with it tonight.

So. Worth. It.

If you are thinking of what to get a child (anywhere from 15 months to, I don't know, 12?) for a gift, maybe a gift certificate for Build a Bear would be a good one! It's a fun experience for them.

Disclosure: This is in no way a sponsored review.

Starlight Toy Drive

I think in the hectic consumer madness of the season (a friend mentioned today that Christmas is only five weeks away!), we sometimes forget what it's really all about. Here's a little reminder that the gifts which mean the most need not be found at the shopping mall.

From now until December 9th, Starlight Children’s Foundation is hosting their Annual Starlight Toy Drive. You can help spread holiday cheer to a Starlight Child or Family by donating as little as $20 to sponsor a holiday stocking. For children dealing with serious medical conditions, holidays often take a back seat. Many parents also don’t have the means to celebrate as most time is spent caring for their ailing child. Starlight’s multiple giving opportunities make it easy for people to donate and help make a holiday wish come true.

This program helps Canadian children who are seriously ill and their families celebrate the season. You do get a tax receipt for donating, and you can even donate in someone else's name, as a Christmas gift. Last year for my parents' birthdays, they requested donations be made to local food banks in lieu of gifts - they have enough 'stuff' and wanted to give instead. What a fabulous gift this would be for both the people who have everything, and for children who are truly in need of a little cheering.

The Starlight Children's Foundation Canada has been helping children with chronic, life threatening illnesses and life-altering injuries for more than 20 years. For more information, visit their Book of Smiles website.

Healthy Options of Days Gone By - Review & Giveaway!

***This giveaway is now closed!***
Winner - Jen M!

A while ago (and I mean a while... this move has really thrown off my schedule here), I was contacted to try out some mum and baby products from a small, family-run company called Healthy Options of Days Gone By. How fun! I loved the pack of products I got to try.
Included were:

• two dryer sachets (only one is pictured)
  
• Tiny Hiney Body Powder
• Tiny Hiney Hand & Body Creme
• Tiny Hiney Diaper Creme
• Vanilla Comfort Sugar Scrub (that's the one I keep in the bag - it leaked a little but the bag caught all of the leak! Now they package scrubs in reuseable glass jars - no more leaks!)
  
• three lovely soaps (only two are pictured)

Since I received the products, there have been some improvements in the packaging! Besides the scrubs going into glass containers, cremes and salves now come in tin containers (no more plastic), and all the labels are recycled paper! I love seeing a company that is already going with natural products make moves to reduce their impact on the environment as well.

We love the Longing for Lavender dryer sachet. I'm using all-natural, scent-free detergent now, and the sachet is full of lavender flowers, adding a lovely fragrance to our clothing. You just pop it in the dryer and leave it - to renew the scent just give it a squish. I was also sent a Rescue Me Rose dryer sachet. I have to say that rose scent is not my cup of tea, so I passed it to a friend - who loves it! What I like about these is the ease of use, the natural contents and of course the way our clothes and linens now smell just lightly like lavender :) They are VERY reasonably priced at only $2.50!

The Tiny Hiney body powder is a talc-free powder for baby. I admit to occasionally using a baby powder on myself when it gets hot as well. It is silky smooth and all natural. I love the little glass shaker it comes in, too!

The Tiny Hiney Hand & Body Creme I find slightly oily to the touch, but it does work wonders on dry skin. The air out here in Calgary is super dry compared to Toronto, and I am in need of a good moisturizer! The base is beeswax, and it is filled with moisturizing and essential oils to make a real treat for your skin.

Mia (cross fingers) hasn't had trouble with diaper rashes (I accredit this to her intolerance of a wet diaper, and using cloth diapers), but it is good to have the Tiny Hiney Diaper Creme on hand. I don't want to use anything with parabens or phthalates on her, and I also need any cream to be compatible with cloth diapers. I can't vouch for that, but using a liner with it would likely mitigate any oils getting onto the diapers.

The Vanilla Comfort Sugar Scrub is a nice treat for mums (or dads!). It is made with raw sugar and provides a good solid skin scrub. It smells lovely. To look at, it is dark and oily, but it leaves skin refreshed and moisturized. It contains Vitamin E to help heal and regenerate skin.

We also received three of their lovely cold-processed soaps to try out. We tried Sweet Southern Green Tea, Tiny Hiney with Flowers, and Tiny Hiney body soap. Again, very nice. I thought it was funny that there were bits of real tea leaves in the Green Tea soap. Little black bits surprised me in the shower until I realized what they were :) I found it lathered really well and left my skin soft.

What I like best about these products is that they are all natural, no chemicals. The packaging is simple, rustic and charming (some of the samples I received are in different packages than the ones you would get when you shop). Overall, really lovely natural products, and all very affordable as well.

Healthy Options of Days Gone By has VERY generously put together a Momma/baby gift basket for one of my lucky readers! The basket contains:

For mom:
Longing for Lavender Bath Soap
Kiss Me Goodnite Bath Soap
Longing for Lavender Bath Salt
Longing for Lavender Body Powder
Tiny Hiney Hand Cream

For baby:
Tiny Hiney Bath Soap
Tiny Hiney w/flowers Bath Soap
Tiny Hiney Body Powder
Tiney Hiney Diaper Creme

Wow. This would make a fantastic baby shower or new mum gift, or a wonderful treat for any family.

The giveaway:
One winner will receive the fantastic momma/baby basket described above!

How to enter:
This is the mandatory entry - do this first to qualify for bonus entries!

Visit Healthy Options of Days Gone By and tell me your favourite product, OR something else you learned there.
Make sure I've got a way to contact you if you're the winner!

Bonus entries: (please leave an extra comment for each. If you already do any of these things, leave the comment - you do get the entry for it!):

• Like Healthy Options of Days Gone By on Facebook (leave your first name and initial!)
• Follow the Healthy Options of Days Gone By blog
• Heart Healthy Options of Days Gone By on Etsy (leave your Etsy name!)
  
• Follow me on Twitter (leave your Twitter name!)
• Tweet about this giveaway and leave me the link to your tweet! You can do this once a day and you can use this tweet if you like:
  

  #Win a Healthy Options of Days Gone By natural gift basket for mum & baby at Emily's Latest! @emilyisland http://bit.ly/km3E2o US/CAN (5/17)
  

• Follow my blog (publicly) – 2 entries, leave 2 comments
• Add my blog button to your blog– 2 entries, leave 2 comments (please leave a link to your blog)

I will be verifying comments so please actually do the things you say you do ☺

Please be sure to include your email address if it’s not public in your blogger profile! Anonymous comments without a way to contact you will be rejected. Canadian or US mailing addresses only, please. Giveaway ends May 17th at 11:59 EST. A winner will be drawn within the next day or two, announced here, in a separate post and emailed!

A start on holiday baking

I've started making the treats for my holiday tins -

kind of a lousy photo, sorry!

Chocolate dipped pretzels - two kinds. These are super easy to do, and fun. I think next time I would use pretzel twists, I was thinking rods would be easier (and they probably were) but they are not quite as pretty.

Just melt 1/2 cup of chocolate in the microwave at 50% power for 3-5 minutes, stirring every minute, dip the pretzels, lay on waxed paper, and sprinkle. I used Belgian milk chocolate sprinkled with Skor bits for half, and dark chocolate-mint (mint-flavoured chocolate chips make that super easy) with sprinkles for the other half. If I were really fancy I would have drizzled with white chocolate - but I'm not.

Thumbprint cookies from the Canadian Living Baking book - made with brown sugar instead of white, and rolled in chopped pecans. For the filling, I did half the batch with Crofter's Europe Superfruit (pomegranates and black currants blended with red grapes and morello cherries), which wasn't as pretty as I'd hoped - the filling went really dark after baking, and the jam is so thick that it didn't spread out at all (they do taste great, though!). The ones that you can see in the picture are the other half batch, for which I used homemade strawberry-mango jam, and I think they were more successful. These were a bit of work for only three dozen cookies, but they are so pretty and delicious. You can also top them with chocolate chunks or Hershey's kisses - I was thinking how pretty and festive white chocolate or yogourt with a dried cranberry in the center would be, too. Lots of options!

The cookies go in the freezer for a few days until I am ready to make up the tins, to keep their freshness. The chocolate dipped pretzels can hang out at room temperature (freezing or refrigerating would make the chocolate "bloom").

Still to come - shortbread, ginger cookies, and super easy microwave fudge. I'll share that fudge recipe with you, too - it's so simple with great results.

Christmas and the Gift Dilemma

The thing with Christmas when you're all grown up is that you pretty much have what you need. And generally, you have what you want, too - at least, the people I know are the kind whose reaction to "want" is "go get". I can't seem to convince anyone to stop buying things they want for themselves in October so that they have a decent wish list by December!

Boy, does that make gift giving difficult.

Even the kids in the family are hard to give to. My nieces and nephew have wish lists, and two of the three (8, 5 and 3 years old) are asking for gift cards. Is that awful, or is it just me?

The last thing I want to give any of them is a gift card. Hey, let's teach them to be consumers and that plastic cards are the ticket to getting anything you want for free! Yeah. Great idea. These are the credit junkies of our future.

I was thinking of making the girls tutus (they like to dress up), but I've no idea what to get the 8-year-old boy. All he seems to do is play on one of those handheld video game consoles (for which he has all the accessories he could possibly want).

Hey! If you're a grown-up friend or family member of mine, better stop reading now!
I mean it!

I am giving mostly practical gifts this year. Things that I know people have worn-out versions of that need replacing. Things that will save my loved ones time doing un-fun chores. Sounds boring, I guess. Maybe it won't be the kind of delight that bursts out of the wrapping, but I hope that each time they use the gift they will find it makes their life easier or better in some way.

The other gift I am giving is treats from the kitchen - I really enjoy baking, and I know most people enjoy homemade goodies, but not everyone has the time (or inclination) to make them. So I'm going to whip up some batches and put them in holiday tins. These are such great neighbour gifts, and lovely to bring as hostess gifts. Some years I do preserves (apple cider or wine jelly is super easy to make, and always impressive), but not this year.

And the last thing I am going to say is that going shopping on a Saturday two weeks before Christmas, especially when you're 32 weeks pregnant, is absolute madness. Common sense, right? So where was my common sense this morning?! My feet are killing me and I can now say I have used every public washroom in the mall, as well as one at a grocery store (even though the lock was broken) on the way home. Desperate times...

Ellia C. Naturals - Review & Holiday Gift Ideas!

I took advantage of that great BOGO deal I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago and picked up some of Ellia C. Naturals' Autumn Harvest soap, and got the bonus of a bar of Festive soap as well. Both of these are limited edition seasonal soaps, so if you want to try them out, now's the time!

Jen was kind enough to send along with my order a few extras for me to try out and review for you! I am just going to come right out and say I love these products. Everything I have tried from her shop has been really great. I confess that when the box arrived in our mailbox, a tiny hole had been poked in it during shipping (not to worry, everything inside was well protected with bubble wrap and peanuts!) and my husband and I took turns sniffing at the hole on the walk home because it smelled so good. Yes, I'm sure we looked crazy.

I also love that it is indicated right on each product page if it contains ingredients that aren't safe for use during pregnancy. This is thoughtful (and timely, for me) and something that I really haven't seen on other product sites. I'm not talking about chemicals here, because all the ingredients are natural and often organic, but some essential oils are not recommended for use during pregnancy and if the soaps contain them, there's a warning. Love that.

Here are some of the goodies I got to try:

The Autumn Harvest soap. It's so pretty, and perfect for this time of year. A spice-coloured soap bar (generously sized!) with shavings of white soap on top - it looks good enough to eat! I pulled it out of the packaging so you could see how pretty it looks (and I love the simple packaging, wrapped with a ribbon). It is just about the same colour as our countertop in the bathroom so I put it on a towel so you can see it properly. It smells like fall. It's made with freshly ground spices, shea butter, coconut milk and pumpkin... doesn't that sound decadent? I'm busting this one out as soon as I'm finished my current soap... if I can wait that long.

The Festive Soap - again a very pretty double-layer bar with an adorable coordinating ribbon on the paper wrap. What's in it? "Cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom pair nicely with sweet orange, tangerine, and lemon... with a splash of cranberry juice" Um, yum. This one I've been sniffing every time I pass anywhere near it. It smells like all the best things about Christmas and the holidays, without being overpowering. It has a very natural, spicy and fresh scent - hard to describe but it's SO good. I'm saving it for December (yes, I coordinate my soap smell with the season)!

This is an adorable soap pop - cute or what? I think this would be a great gift for kids (or the sweet-toothed adult)! This one is a Whipped Pumpkin Soap Pop, again perfect for the season. They also come in Peppermint Stick, Rainbow Splash (citrus) and Sassy Pants (bergamot and grapefruit). Yum. Cutest packaging ever! The Ellia C. Naturals line also has lollipop soaps (Lather Lollies) in the same fragrances, AND coming soon are cupcake soaps! These products are great for littles, because they contain only natural ingredients, get the cleaning job done, and also provide natural moisture for sensitive skin. Stocking stuffers, maybe? (Speaking of, you've also got to check out the Gingerbread Man soaps...)

Now it's clear that these are brand spankin' new products in the photos - so you may wonder, how can I review them if they're not used yet? Well, I have used Ellia C. Naturals soaps in the past (I've had the pleasure of trying many different bars) and have been 100% happy with them. They smell amazing through and through, last a long time (especially with the Natural Pine Soap Deck which I also have), have a lovely texture, and leave my skin feeling soft and lightly moisturized (but never greasy!). My husband even uses them. So I am full out confident that these will be the same quality (and I can definitely vouch for how awesome they smell!).

One product that I am saving for the (eeks!) near future is the Back in the Saddle Postpartum Sitz Tea. This sample is like a giant tea bag of organic, fair trade herbs and botanicals that are soothing to give a new mama a little relief. The full-size product comes loose in a jar with a reuseable muslin bag and holds enough for 4-5 baths. Awesome, thoughtful gift for an expecting mama, folks!

Here's another that would be a great mama gift - the Mama Meringue body whip. It comes in four different varieties (three scents and unscented), and I got to try out the Lemon Lavender version. Again, it smells amazing - fresh, clean and natural, but not chemically or overwhelming. The scent IS strong but it is not the heavy kind of smell that will give you a headache or anything (I've got it on now and I can smell it where I applied it on my arm if I sniff it, but it's not a constant smell surrounding me, if you know what I mean. This can be used as a belly balm (you know I love me some belly balm) or as a general moisturizer. It's a shea butter lotion made from natural oils and contains Vitamin E as well, great for the skin! The consistency is kind of stiff in the jar, but softens up easily with the warmth of your hands to scoop out a little and glides on. Love.

I'm going to put it out there that you should seriously consider these products for holiday gifts for your favourite person. The individual cold processed soaps are really pretty and luxurious for anyone; check out the holiday gift sets as well. If you don't find exactly what you want there, they also do custom gift sets and even party favours.

While you are looking at the Ellia C. Naturals line, you might notice that there's a lot more to the site than just natural bath and body care. Jennifer is the owner and founder of not just Ellia C. Naturals but also the Bullfrogs & Butterflies Boutique, which has loads of beautiful gifts for little ones and mamas, too.

And here's a tip for you: if you sign up for their newsletter, you will find that there is a great big Black Friday deal just for newsletter subscribers about to be announced! You can also like Ellia C. Naturals on Facebook and follow on Twitter for product updates and specials!

A big thank you to Jenn from Ellia C. Naturals for providing me with some of her gorgeous products to try out. I did receive samples for review, but was not paid for this post.