When Mom Central asked if we wanted to review some Hickory Farms products, I figured we’d get a little basket with one or two cheeses and a roll of oh-so-yummy meat. I was wrong. We got a soft-sided toolbox stuffed to the brim with cheeses, crackers, various meats and even some spicy mustard that is now my favorite spicy mustard. Ever. It took me awhile and the help of my husband to realize it was a toolbox though.

What was in it?

- 12 oz. Our Original Beef Summer Sausage
- 12 oz Spicy Savory Beef Summer Sausage
- 7 oz. Ham Summer Sausage
- 8 oz. Mini Beef Sausage Snacks
- 3.6 oz. Beef Sausage Snacks
- 3.6 oz Spicy Beef Sausage Snacks
- 10 oz. Hickory Cheddar Blend
- 10 oz. Jalapeno and Cheddar Blend
- 7 oz. Mission Jack Blend
- 6 oz. Smoked Gouda Blend
- 10 oz. Sweet Hot Mustard
- 5 oz. Golden Toasted Crackers
- 5 oz. Cracked Wheat Crackers
- Black Nylon Tool Bag

To be honest, we’re still not all the way done with everything that was stuffed inside that awesome nylon tool bag even though we’ve had two small get togethers and one big birthday party since it arrived in our house. It’s not because the food isn’t good. It is! The cheeses are all fabulous. Of course, I love cheese as I think it makes anything better. The boys have enjoyed most of the cheese, though neither enjoyed the jalapeno/cheddar mix. (More for me!)

Our favorite snack was one of the crackers, a little bit of the mustard, a small slice of cheese and a small slice of one of the meats. Yum! Quick snack that looks nice on a plate. Hooray!

FireDad’s response to all of this? “A tool bag? With meat? Win win.”

Of course, Hickory Farms has plenty of other win-win gifts to give this season, from a very simple block of cheese to baskets that are stuffed to the brim as well. I remember thinking that baskets of food were, meh, okay when I was younger. Now that I have parties to host and friends to feed, I love any extra help I can get! I know that I would love to receive such an awesome gift!

Hickory Farms now accepts PayPal as well, making it easy for your to purchase safely online. Easy and satisfying. Hooray! (Oh! And they even have a Facebook page! Awesome!)

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[Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Hickory Farms and received a Hickory Farms gift basket to facilitate my review.]

If you’re not a regular reader of our main blog, you might not know that I love Christmas. (I love Christmas!) I was contacted two weeks ago about reviewing The Original Christmas Classics , Limited Keepsake Edition. I wiggled and giggled and said, “HOORAY!” What’s on this 3 DVD set?

• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Cricket on the Hearth
• Frosty the Snowman, Frosty Returns
• Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town!, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, The Little Drummer Boy
• Plus a bonus CD with seven classic Christmas songs!

As a side note, I can make the high pitched noise that Rudolph’s nose makes. Just ask FireDad. He learned that on our very first Christmas together when I made the noise for him and he looked at me like I had two heads. And yet he still married me. That’s love.

Anyway, I’m thrilled to have this DVD set in our holiday library. Nothing beats the classics. Rudolph is one of my all time holiday favorites followed shortly behind by Frosty. While all of the new movies and shorts being released with well known characters are sure to engage our children, I love bonding with my boys over things that I once loved when I was their age… and still love. Dearly.

The best thing about this DVD set, other than bringing seven great Christmas shows to one place? No commercials! You can argue that, sure, these are on television every year and you can catch them on a nice snowy evening with your children. Except that, as an example, my children go to bed before primetime and can’t ever watch them when they’re on television. Furthermore, shows like these when presented on television are packed full of commercials that make kids go, “OH! I WANT THAT!” No thanks! Skip the commercials and the gimmes and watch it on your very on DVD player.

Want it? Good! We’re giving away one full DVD set. But not just for commenting. We want some audience participation! We’re having a coloring contest*! (Contest is a loosely used word here. It’s still a random giveaway but you can’t be entered to win if you don’t participate!)

Here’s how to enter:

1. Print out this picture of Frosty and have your child(ren) color it. You may allow each of your children to color the picture one time. (Three kids? Three different Frosty pages. One kid. One Frosty page.) If they want to add stickers and sequins and paint, well, you have to clean it up and I don’t so, sure, go at it! (Note: Selecting print preview and changing the orientation to landscape and the size to 125% makes it a full size picture but is not required.)

2. Take a picture of your child with his/her creation. If you do not wish for your child’s likeness to be used online, take a picture of the creation itself without your child’s beautiful, smiling face.

3. Email the picture with the following information: your name, your blog URL and name (if you have one), your child’s name (as you would like to have it used online), and your child’s age. My email is firemom [at] stopdropandblog [dot] com. Please put COLORING CONTEST (in caps) in the subject line so I can find your entry! Please send a separate email and picture for each of your children. (That makes it easy to enter into my spreadsheet! Help me out!)

3a. You may also post your entry on your own public blog with a link to this giveaway for an extra entry. Please send a separate email with a link to your URL so that I may enter that on my spreadsheet as well. Use COLORING CONTEST (in caps) as your subject again.

Entries will be accepted until Friday, November 27, 2009 (also known as BLACK FRIDAY) at noon. The winner will be pulled via random.org and contacted via email. DVD will be shipped straight from my contact, not from me. Winner will be posted with the winning photo on Stop, Drop & Blog with a link to your blog (if you are a blogger). On that post I will also share pictures of BigBrother and LittleBrother’s coloring pages (but they’re obviously not entered in the giveaway; that would be silly!). We will also do a collage of all entrants and include links to all who participated (and gave their blog URL)  on that post. It will be a big, happy holiday celebration!

That’s about it! Go ahead and download the picture, print it out and get to coloring.

And if you don’t win? Pick up The Original Christmas Classics . It’s currently $21.49 on Amazon. A great gift for your children or a stocking stuffer for an adult who grew up adoring these holiday classics.

I know. Halloween isn’t until the end of the week. But I already have designed, ordered and received my Christmas cards. Don’t hate me. Or judge me. I’ve been on the ball this year! (I already ordered the boys’ Christmas pajamas as well.) I want to help you get on the holiday ball as well. First, let me tell you my experience with Vista Print and our Christmas cards.

I knew a few things about our Christmas cards before I even began to look at designs.

• I wanted a photo card.
• I wanted to use pictures from our family vacation at the beach on those photo cards.
• I wanted something that wasn’t going to break the bank.

I turned to Vista Print because they’ve been flawless for me for almost three years now. I was thrilled when I saw that they offered two sizes of photo holiday cards (4×8 and 5×7). I decided to go with the 4×8 cards. Why? Slightly cheaper and personal preference. (As a side note, Vista Print also offers non-photo cards, postcards for your holiday party invitations and even cute caricature cards!) When I decided to go with the 4×8 cards, I was then overwhelmed with my options as to style. I could have designed my own but I didn’t quite know what went with our beach pictures.

In fact, that was my biggest dilemma. Our beach pictures are not exactly holiday oriented. No snow. No long pants. They’re by the water. In the sand. In shorts. With short-sleeved green shirts. And a blue sky. Thankfully, Vista Print doesn’t only offer your typical green and red card with a Christmas tree (though they have those as well). There were over 20 pages to click through. These are the options I most pondered when trying to pick our design.

The palm tree was fun but slightly cheesy. The brown with green  and the green with black were both great. But we eventually chose the last, more colorful option with the Christmas ornaments. It just felt bright and cheery and seemed to match our chosen photos the best. We chose six photos to include on this particular card, uploaded them, added our text and came up with these amazing cards.

(If you are on my Christmas card mailing list, forget you have seen this card and be really surprised when it arrives in your mailbox!)

I was thrilled with how they turned out. We put the verse from Luke that is found in Charlie Brown’s Christmas on the back of the card as our family loves that particular one, verse and movie alike. Voila! The perfect Christmas card! For a fraction of the cost of some other places. Hooray! It was easy to put together (just upload your photos, adjust them if they cropped them wrong, add your text and ship) and the quality is fabulous. Again, I’m just thrilled. I want to frame our Christmas card.

And we want to give you 50 free holiday cards from Vista Print as well! We’re giving away 50 free cards of your choosing (one design). Here’s how to enter.

1. Visit VistaPrint’s Christmas card section and browse around. Come back to this post and let me know in a comment which design you would choose if you won. (You are not limited to the 4×8 cards.) As a side note, you can change your mind on your design if you win. You may do this once.

2. Tweet about this contest by copy/pasting the following into your twitter stream: Win 50 holiday cards from @VistaPrint and @FireMom: http://bit.ly/2HTZ4F . You may do this as many times as your followers will tolerate.

3. Post about this giveaway on your public blog, linking back to this post. Please leave a comment with your post URL so I am sure not to miss it!

This giveaway will be live until Friday, November 6 at noon. It’s a few days shorter than my normal giveaways but I want the winner to be able to create their cards with enough time for shipping, addressing and mailing back out. The time is especially necessary if the winner doesn’t have photos for their card just yet! We will choose a random winner who will be contacted by email. The winner has 24 hours to reply or another winner will be chosen! (Rules: Limited to the US.)

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

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[Disclosure: I received my cards for free in exchange for this review.]

When Parent Bloggers Network asked if I wanted to review some holiday books about faeries, my thoughts immediately jumped to the Munchkin. I don’t normally get to review too much girly stuff on the blog(s) as I’m the everyday Mom to two boys. However, for those not in the know, I am in a fully open adoption with the daughter I relinquished for adoption. I have to choose presents for her for birthdays, Christmas and at other times and, to be honest, I struggle with that process. So I jumped at the chance to review some books that were right in her age range and interests (faeries, for the win!).

The books are from Positive Spin Press and they are adorable. Adorable! The illustrations are interesting, cute and well-composed on the pages. The stories themselves are interesting for kids. While I liked the Halloween book well enough ( ), I am in love with Christmas Eve: The Joy of Giving (about Christmas, obviously) and Winter’s Eve: Love and Lights (about Hanukkah, obviously).

First and foremost, I probably love the fact that this publisher has a book with the same faeries talking about the two (well, more than two) different holidays solely because my daughter is biologically and adoptively (sure, it’s a word) part-protestant Christian and part-Jewish. She has been raised with the two traditions and I loved that these two books tied them together for her! How unique! Usually you find a series of books that only addresses Christmas or only addresses Hanukkah. This time, we see Eve, the fairy, experiencing the different stories in both books. It shows my unique little Munchkin that, yes, you can celebrate both (or others!) and be a pretty awesome girl. I was so very excited about this aspect of the series.

In Christmas Eve, which would be my holiday of celebrating choice, I loved how Santa and Jesus are both talked about instead of one or the other. This is important to me! His birth is discussed and the fact that we should be getting into the joy of giving at Christmastime. It was very heart-warming. In Winter’s Eve, we get to see Eve actually learn about many of the winter celebrations (not just Hannukah). I actually learned a few things in this book myself (yes, as an adult). I also enjoyed the diversity of this particular book; it is something we strive for in books for all of our children.

The only thing I didn’t like about all three books? The Curlz MT font on any of the special words. Yes, folks. That’s the only thing I can think to pick apart. And yes, it’s totally dorky to admit that I know the name of a font. In fact, I know the names of many a font. I accept my dorkiness. Do you?

Anyway, I would really suggest buying one, two or all three of these books for a little fairy lover in your life. (Yes, Halloween just passed but grab it for next year!) To boot? PBN is giving away three copies of each book! Go find out how to win! (Ahem. And go vote today. Thanks!)