Review and giveaway: kids toothbrush and toothpaste

This month we were asked to do a family review of a kids’ toothbrush and toothpaste that you can customize with stickers:
ARM & HAMMER® Spinbrush® MY WAY!™ battery-powered toothbrush and Orajel® MY WAY!™ Kids Toothpaste. I have to tell you that Ro and Ree were pretty excited for this review, especially because they had spotted these toothbrushes in the grocery store just last week and begged me to buy them (kudos to the marketing folks).


Toothbrushes: The customization concept is a great one for kids, especially siblings, and here’s why: it’s FUN to use the waterproof stickers to decorate your own stuff, and (this one makes me stand up and cheer) the custom decorations mean that no more fighting takes place over toothbrushes. You think I’m kidding? About once a month in this house Ro and Ree get their toothbrushes mixed up, lay claim to the same one, and fight (loudly -- with much dramatics and even more tears).

Well now the girls have tried out Spinbrush toothbrushes and truly enjoyed decorating them and using them. The neat spinning technology makes the toothbrushes “funner” (their word) to brush with, so they brush WAY longer and do a much more thorough job. Always a plus in this house, where we have one enthusiastic brusher and one extremely haphazard one.


Toothpaste: Now for the Orajel® MY WAY!™ Kids Toothpaste. We give this one a mixed review. The sticker customization was creative and fun, and the girls appreciated having their own toothpaste containers that couldn’t get mixed up (see aforementioned bathroom fights), but the mechanisms didn’t work well for us. We got two tubes of toothpaste to review, and the push button on one tube was inoperable straight out of the box (we never got any toothpaste to come out) and the working one is hard for our kids to operate (they don’t have the finger strength to easily get enough toothpaste out). The fruity flavor got huge, enthusiastic thumbs-up from both girls, and they prefer it over the brand we were using.


The giveaway: Enter our giveaway from 5/12/11 to 6/9/11 to win a $100 Visa giftcard, provided by BlogHer and ARM & HAMMER. To enter, just leave a comment sharing something creative to do with kids (we love anything creative, crafty, or family-oriented around here and are always looking for fun ideas).

Rules: No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw conducted by BlogHer, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to respond, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

For more information, please see:
• BlogHer.com Round-up Page: Visit the Exclusive Offers section
• Rules : Visit the Official Rules
• Sponsor URL Spinbrush: Visit the Official Spinbrush® MY WAY! ® site
• Sponsor URL Orajel: Visit the Official Orajel® MY WAY!™ site

Disclosure: I received two Spinbrush toothbrushes and two Orajel toothpastes from ARM & HAMMER in order to complete this review and I was compensated by BlogHer for writing this review. All opinions are my own.

Winner drawn in HomeGoods giveaway

Thanks for all the great gift suggestions, you guys are awesome!! We had entries from #2 through #219 for the $50 HomeGoods giveaway, and I used random.org to pick the winner, which was commenter #5.

Congratulations to Kay’s Mommy who said: “My sister in law takes the most beautiful pictures that I could never compare to. Picture frames are always a fool proof gift because I know she always has something waiting for a frame. Your girls are adorable! My 5 year old is also on a fairy kick!”

I’ll be emailing Kay’s Mommy in a sec. Thanks everyone and Happy New Year!

Two winners in the Hallmark recordable storybook giveaway

Two winners were chosen in this giveaway, by generating random numbers at random.org.

Congratulations to Becky, who was commenter #98 and said “I would give a Hallmark book with my voice to my nieces who live several hours away.”

And congratulations to commenter #17, Susan, who said “I would love to have our daughter record the book for my mother, who lives in another state.  Last year we sent her a mother's day card with our daughter's voice on it, and Mom keeps it by the couch where she can replay it whenever she wants to hear her voice. But that thing is going to wear out soon!”

I’ll be emailing both winners in the next few minutes. Thanks everyone for entering!! Loved reading your comments.

Review and giveaway: Hallmark recordable storybooks

Does your family have a Hallmark recordable storybook yet? We do, actually we have two. One that we bought last year and one that Hallmark just sent us to review. These books have built-in voice recorders to let you personalize each page and are just the neatest things!

We give the books two thumbs up, and actually plan to buy a few more. They’re perfect for the holidays and make wonderful gifts. You can record your own voice, your childrens’ voices, or (our personal favorite) grandparents’ voices reading these classic stories. My folks recorded The Night Before Christmas for Ro and Ree last year, and when we head to Texas for the holidays, we’re going to have TubaDad’s folks record Frosty the Snowman. That way Ro and Ree will always have their grandparents’ voices reading to them. What a treasure!

Ro and Ree love these books and carry them everywhere. They’re a special part of our holidays. They listen to the stories over and over and giggle and cheer with every page turn.

The giveaway: If you’d like your own Hallmark recordable storybook, please enter our giveaway. Two salsa readers will win a Hallmark recordable book, which will be mailed to you before Christmas. See the full selection of books here. To enter the giveaway, fill out this form:

Giveaway entries can be viewed here. Comments on this post are closed so that all giveaway entries will go to the above form. If you’re planning to do any shopping at Hallmark this weekend, by the way, bring this $5 coupon with you.

The rules: Promotion begins 12/3/2010 and ends 5:00 p.m. (PST) 12/8/2010. No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt in the above form
b) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in the above form
This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

Disclosure: I was given one Hallmark recordable book in order to write this review. All opinions are my own.

Review and giveaway: HomeGoods holiday gift hunt

This is a compensated review by BlogHer and HomeGoods.

I was recently invited to review the HomeGoods store by participating in a $50 gift-shopping challenge. As a veteran HomeGoods shopper I know that the store carries practically everything under the sun at crazy affordable prices, so the answer was easy: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!

The girls and I set out one afternoon and breezed into the store.

We kept an open mind and figured we’d know the winning gifts when we saw them. Hm, perhaps not the best strategy when the absolute first thing we saw was the BIGGEST LOLLIPOP IN THE WORLD. Ro and Ree screamed and ran over to it hopping and gasping and trying to convince me that they might perish on the spot if they didn’t get this gift.

Steering resolutely away from the giganto pop (which I suspect TubaDad is going to get for his sweeties the second he reads this review), I managed to refocus them on our task, and we went on find some really cute gifts. We found some adorable soft, sparkly sugar plum fairies for the girls’ friends (I think their whole gang is nuts about fairies this year).

We found an entire aisle of pink stuff – oh the squealing and twirling and leaping. I was laughing so hard I almost forgot to take a picture. Pretty much everything in that aisle was perfect for Ro and Ree’s buddies:

And we found really affordable stocking stuffers around every corner! I may or may not have grabbed a few chocolate snowmen, and one of them may or may not have been devoured already during the writing of this review. There’s really no need to discuss it any further, right?

Let’s see, what else? Oh! We found the best frames and mirrors. I was so tempted to walk out with a wall-sized mirror for my living room (oh man it was gorgeous), but left that one for another shopping trip and picked up a few of these fun, brightly colored iron frames instead. Nice price!

In the end, our $50 gift challenge was met with the following seven gifts:
2 sugar plum fairies: $14
2 Nutcrackers: $18
3 iron picture frames (to fill with pics for the grandparents): $18

Oh, and can you guess who the Nutcrackers are for? Hee. Yes, Ro and Ree each got to pick out a gift for themselves.

One of my favorite things about the store, by the way, is the check-out system. You get in a single-file line, and once you get to the front of the line an automated system calls out the number of the next available cash register. Such a relief for someone like me who ALWAYS picks the slowest line if given a choice. We went to the store in the middle of Black Friday weekend, and the huge line you see in this picture took us only 4 minutes to navigate (yes I timed it). Sweet!

If you need any gifts this holiday, head to your nearest HomeGoods and I’ll bet you’ll find plenty of neat stuff for everyone on your list (and you’ll even have money left over to buy yourself a few gifts!).

The giveaway:

You can also enter our giveaway to win your own $50 HomeGoods giftcard. To enter, just leave a comment with a great gift idea for someone who is hard to buy for (I have so many of those on my list!). For more chances to win, see the other bloggers’ reviews.

(Comments on this post are closed so all entries go to the above form. View form entries here.)

The rules:
Promotion begins 9:00 a.m. (PST) 11/29/2010 and ends 5:00 p.m. (PST) 12/29/2010. No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt in the above form
b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in the above form
c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in the above form
d) Read the official rules for alternate form of entry.
This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. Full text of the Official Rules is available here.

Disclosure: I received a $50 giftcard from HomeGoods in order to complete my gift challenge and was compensated by BlogHer for writing this review. All opinions are my own.

Psst, want a cool site for Christmas presents? (review of Novica handcrafted art web site)

I always have the hardest time finding great presents for friends and family. I am just not a very creative shopper (unless you’re talking about little girl clothes, hee!). So when the folks at Novica contacted me about a product review, I checked out the web site, was very intrigued, and instantly saw a solution to my gifting dilemmas.

Novica is associated with National Geographic, and they provide a global web site for artists around the world to sell their handcrafted art. They have the most beautiful products, from ceramics and furniture created in the Andes to apparel and ornaments from Thailand to baskets and instruments from West Africa. And each item has a fascinating description of the artist.

I browsed for almost an hour (not even kidding) before selecting an Alpaca Wool Wrap in Brown Tweed from the Andes to review. It was designed by Alfredo Falcon, a third-generation weaver whose life has been changed by Novica. His story is typical of many of the artists.

I’ve been wearing the beautiful wrap for a couple of weeks now and love it!

It’s kind of become my go-to cool weather accessory. It’s warm, cozy, fun to wear in different ways, and SO much more stylish than my boring old cardigans. Now if I was on America’s Next Top model, I’d figure out a stunningly awesome pose to show the wrap off, but I’m just a mama, so the pic to the left is what you get.

And here’s the back view – isn’t the wrap fun-looking from any angle? Thanks to TubaDad for taking these photos, by the way:

Here’s a close-up of the yummy browns:

And here’s one of our littles, who just had to try it on. Can you guess which girl this is?:

The Novica web site is chock full of interesting artists and art that would make a perfect gift (for a friend or for yourself!). If you want a wrap of your own this winter, check out the amazing selection here. They've also got jewelry, corporate gifts, green gifts, unique gifts, holiday items, and even a microfinance section where artists can get loans without interest. It’s just plain neat. And I’m planning to do a whole bunch of my Christmas shopping there.

Disclosure: I was provided with a Novica product of my choice (the Alpaca Wrap) for the purposes of this review. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. No additional compensation was received.

Winner for PlasmaCar giveaway!

Oh my goodness, thank you for all the fun entries in the PlasmaCar giveaway!!! This was BY FAR the most popular giveaway we've ever hosted. Wow. We had over 400 entries (see them all here), with 394 entries in before the giveaway cutoff time. I used random.org to draw the winner, and the winning comment was at 8/24/2010 15:40:21 from ali, and she said simply "RED". Heh.

Ali, I'll send you an email shortly. The winner has 48 hours to respond or I'll have to draw a new winner.

Thanks everyone, and thanks PlaSmart.