Wednesday, November 24, 2010

My Exciting Part Time Job!

I won't keep you waiting any longer!  I am now selling Discovery Toys!  They have some super duper cool stuff.  Check them out here: http://www.discoverytoyslink.com/maria-starr  Happy Browsing!  Feel free to place an order, contact me for a show or catalog show if you want lots of free product, or just look around to see some popular items this year!

FREE ON FRIDAY!!!!





Online Only!

Skip the long crazy lines on Black Friday and shop from your computer! Know for sure you are getting what you want! No waiting at 3am in a line to maybe get what you want! Get high quality educational toys with a lifetime guarantee with just a few clicks of your mouse:)



Spend $55 and get to choose 1 of the following toys for FREE!

Super Yummy Teether #2937 Reg. $10




Place and Trace #1888 Reg. $15





Progressive Puzzles #2937 Reg.$15



Whiz Kidz #4966 Reg. $12.50





Online Orders Only!

Go to http://www.discoverytoyslink.com/maria-starr
to take advantage of FREE toys!

Monday, November 22, 2010

Should I do Christmas cards?

Every year about this time, I start thinking about Christmas cards. I LOVE Christmas cards, don't you? I love getting them practically every day in December. It makes trudging out to the mail box in the cold winter totally worth it, wondering if there will be any Christmas cards in there! I guess I started my love of Christmas cards when I was little by helping my mom who sent out Christmas cards and letters every year.

It's quite a job...first you have to write the cards to people and sign them. Then comes the "Christmas letter" with a brief update of what everyone has been doing all year, good and bad. And then comes the not so fun part of addressing the cards with the to and from labels and putting the stamps on...and then the least fun part of all...sealing all the dang cards!



And every year, for the past several years, during the month of November, I always tell Josh, I don't think I feel like doing Christmas cards this year.  It's too much work.  BUT every year, once that first incoming card hits our box, I have to rush to prepare our cards to send out.  It's a pretty cool American tradition, actually.  It's a nice way to keep in touch with people from the past, as well as present people, of course.  BUT it is a lot of work!!!


However, in the end it's all worth it because in order to get Christmas cards, YOU HAVE TO SEND THEM. ;)   I figure if I stopped sending cards out, I wouldn't get any in my mailbox.  I started doing picture cards with Shutterfly a few years back when Claire was a baby, and was super pleased at how easy they were to do. I always have fun looking around at different sites to see what kind of layouts and designs they have every year, but Shutterfly always wins my vote. Check out these super cute Holiday cards that the have this year: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/holiday-cards


Last Feb. I made a book with Shutterfly with "Flat Chloe" and loved the end result. It was super easy to upload and work on their site.  They had all the premade scrapbooking pages set up and it was super easy to do.  I have used Shutterfly in the past for photo cars.  I like that there are so many things you can personalize about it.  You pick the design and the picture/s you want to use.  You can also crop and edit pictures on their site.  So, I could edit out these mystery photo hands in this picture. ;)  Or I could crop out Nolan and Alexander, and just use a the head shot of Claire.


 
What I also like is that on the picture cards, you can include more than one picture, because it's pretty dang hard to pick JUST one picture.  Especially if you can easily take, like 242 pictures in one weeks time.  That's pretty unheard of in the day of negative-requiring photography.
 
I really really like this photo card:

I would of course, have to put my kids in there.  Check out the pricing here  I think that they are very reasonable as far as photo cards go.  My favorite has always been the flat photo card in the past, but I'm not quite sure what exactly I'll be doing this year.  I can't spoil it and tell you all the details or show you the pictures that I'm going to be using, quite yet!
 
If you wanna take a look for yourself at some of the other layouts you can check them out here:



· holiday photo cards to http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery

· Christmas cards to http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

· holiday cards to http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/holiday-cards



And to top it all off, Shutterfly is offering 50 free holiday cards of your choosing for doing something as simple as we just did....write a blog post about them. If you are interested, here is how you do it...

Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly… sign up: http://bit.ly/sfly2010