Tag Archives: Family

From the very beginning, I tried to read to Trent as much as possible. He loved little black & white board books, for both looking at and chewing on…babies chew on everything! As he grew older, his attention span grew shorter, and even though he liked sitting with books, he would flip through them too fast for me to read! I guess he wanted to look and be an active part of it and not just listen to me talk, and a book full of words wasn’t as fun to look at. I’ll also confess that I kind of stopped looking at books in the local stores. There is never as much of a selection and they are kind of all similar. And since I’m more of an online shopper anyway, I was thrilled to learn about Usborne Children’s Books!

I was contacted by the lovely Melissa Ewing, who is a consultant for Usborne, to see if I wanted to host a giveaway for you all, and since I had never heard of Usborne before, I asked her for recommendations for Trent and Aubrey. She was so excited about all of the options for us and even selected books she knew they would like based on what she has read on the blog here. Isn’t that so wonderful? I was really excited.

Within a few days of ordering, the books arrived at our door!

Right away, I was impressed with how colorful and interesting these books were. I could tell these were much more unique than what I’m used to seeing in the stores. Melissa truly hit it out of the park on her selections for Trent and Aubrey.

For Aubrey, we have books that are colorful, have few/simple words, and have different textures.

 

“That’s not my fairy…” is a cute little girly book that has fairies with different textures for babies to touch and feel…great for sensory development.

Aubrey was immediately interested.

I think she likes it!

 

“My Wild Animal World” is a collection of mini cardboard books featuring different wild animals.

You can see that they are small, but the illustrations inside are super cute.

Not only did Aubrey like holding them (and yes, biting them)…

…but even Trent came over to join us, where he had fun reading through them and stacking them up high.

 

“Baby’s very first touchy-feely Fingertrail Book” features lots of colors, patterns, textures and flaps for baby to run their fingers across and play with. Trent showed Aubrey what to do.

 

Trent’s books were super fun!

 

“Muddle and Match” is a mix and match book with three different flaps to create different characters and stories.

 

“Lift-the-Flap Colors” is a book chock full of flaps for kids to lift up and find out what’s underneath. There’s several pages of colors, numbers and shapes for kids to discover.

Trent opened every flap, read what was underneath and closed it again…from front to back and then back to front. This one kept him busy for a long time…much longer than any book I’ve tried to read him lately hahaha

“ooooohhhh”

 

“Pull-back Busy Car Book” is really awesome! It comes with this little red pull-back car and the book has an indented trail on each page layout. You wind up the car, place it in the trail, and then let it go and read as it winds it’s way around the book.

Even Aubrey was fascinated. She kept yelling “Oohh!” over and over and watching it go around and around. Just look at her facial expression in these next photos!

We sat on the floor reading and playing with our Usborne books for a while; it was nice to “play” with books…they were interesting and stimulating and educational all at the same time. Double bonus for the convenience of shopping online and getting them at our doorstep!

I also hear they have wonderful books for homeschooling.

Usborne also provides great fundraising programs! The Literacy for a Lifetime program is a 50% grant matching program (minimum of $200 to get the match.) Melissa recently ran one of these for a local organization to provide books for children in need at Christmas time. They raised a little over $600, so with the match had $900+ towards books! For more info: www.literacyforalifetime.org

They also have a fundraising program for individuals, groups, whomever might need it! It’s called “Cards for a Cause” and you can learn more about that here: http://www.cardsforacausefundraisers.com/

 

To shop the amazing book selection, visit Melissa’s Usborne website.

While you’re there, you can also learn about hosting a party (it can be on Facebook!) to share these amazing books with your friends that have kids and earn free books for your family! Ask Melissa how you can earn extra income too!

Instagram: instagram.com/yayusborne

Facebook: facebook.com/yayusborne

Twitter: twitter.com/yayusborne

 

Now it’s time for a giveaway!

Prize: Win $75 worth of Usborne Children’s Books of your choosing. You’ll work with Melissa to pick out the books you want and she’ll also cover the shipping and taxes! ($75 should get the winner at least 4 books, and potentially double that, depending on the books they choose. Of our top 100 best sellers, all but 16 are under $20 and over 60 of them are $12.99 or less.)

Ends: 3/7/15

Open to: US Only

Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter…Good Luck!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy 5 months to Aubrey! And since I just realized I never posted her 4 month update (bad blogging mommy!), here is 4 and 5 month photo post in one!

For past Aubrey Updates: See Aubrey Grow

A new year means another year has ended, and what better time to order photobooks of the prior year than now! This project has been something we’ve been wanting NEEDING to do for a long time. Having a photographer in the family means we have lots and lots of photos, and while we have gotten many printed for frames or on canvas, there are still so many on the computer. I tried to scrapbook a while back in order to have somewhere to display photos, but I got as far as buying a scrapbook and that’s it….it’s still in the plastic. But when we saw someone else’s photobook, we knew that would be the perfect option for us. A photobook is a great way to scrapbook your photos into one convenient book, but in an easier and less messy way! I was so excited to finally create our photobooks using MyPublisher!

We decided to create books by year, that way it was easily categorized and would include all our events and milestones for both kids throughout the entire year. We kept putting this project off because we thought it would take us forever to do, but since Brett already had most of our photos organized by month and MyPublisher’s creation process was fairly simple, it only took us a couple of nights…the hardest part was deciding which photos to use out of the thousands we had to choose from!

MyPublisher.com is easy to navigate, but provides plenty of options. First, select your book style.

Then, choose the type of cover for your book. We chose the Photo Finish.

Then, time to design!

You can choose from various layouts based on how many photos you want to put on each page. You can change this with each page, so your options are endless! And if you want something different, you can make your own layout!

You can choose to have a white background, one of MyPublishers backgrounds, or you can upload your own photo as the background.

You can also add decorative accents (clip art) onto your pages. IF we had one wish, it would be for more accent themes available. They had a few options, but this was a fun way to explain our events/milestones, so more would have been nice.

You can also add text anywhere on the layout.

Once you’re finished creating your layouts, you can view your book in it’s entirety to know how the finished product will look. It’s easy to insert pages if you realize you missed something or want to add more.

Once you place your order, you can check on the status and know when to expect your special delivery.

They turned out amazing!

The covers are sturdy and the colors are beautiful and vibrant. I also like how we can put information on the spine, so they are easily identifiable when lined up on a bookshelf.

We chose glossy pages and each page looks so good! The pages are decently thick and won’t be easily ripped when flipping through.

The photos aren’t distorted in any way and the colors are true to the original.

I especially love the pages with one of our photos as the background…it gives it a unique look that no one else has!

Brett insisted on the lay flat option for the pages, and boy does it make a huge difference. Here is a photo from the MyPublisher site showing the difference between lay flat pages and regular pages.

I definitely recommend it, especially if you have any page layouts that span two pages because it allows you to see more of each page.

For instance, in this next layout, the castle would have been hidden if it were on regular pages and not the lay flat pages.

Just look at these amazing colors!

The photo quality is amazing…of course, it helps that the photos are great to begin with, but they transfer beautifully to the printed photobook pages.

We are extremely happy with our MyPublisher photobooks and I’m glad we finally ordered them. Maybe we won’t wait so long to order 2014!

MyPublisher is awesome about offering promo codes! You can sign up to be on their email list and you’ll receive emails with new promo codes, or just head to their website and the current promo is displayed on the home page! Today, they are offering up to 60% off photobooks with free add-ons - and new customers can get a free photobook

 

To learn more and get started on displaying your memories in a beautiful photobook or album:

MyPublisher.com

Get social with MyPublisher for deals, ideas and more!

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Pinterest

Share!

If you enjoyed this post, I would greatly appreciate it if you’d share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., to help spread the word. Reader comments with your feedback, thoughts, etc., are also greatly appreciated!

Your Thoughts…

Do you make yearly photobooks? Or do you make them for certain events, trips, etc.? Please share below in the comments!

 

Disclaimer: I did receive a special promo code for the purchase of one of these books in exchange for a review, but we personally paid for the rest. All opinions are my own and honest. Thank you for supporting the companies who help support this blog and our family! xo

Yesterday was my birthday.

31 may not be the pivotal year that 30 is for most people, but for me it is. This year marks the first year that I am not pregnant, nor looking towards being pregnant in the future. I was fortunate enough to have the two beautiful kids I wanted, a boy and a girl too - so thankful - and I am satisfied with our little family of four. So with that I say “AND done!!”

I’ve spent my entire working life saving up my leave for maternity leave, and while I still have half a year to go before I get my next leave allotment (I’m almost at zero!), it will be weird not having that thought in my head while making vacation or holiday or just-whatever plans.

Last year’s Disney cruise was my big celebration, since it’s usually too cold in January to do anything and we save the big stuff for Brett’s birthday in June, but I was pregnant and spent the entire last day throwing up. And NOT from drinking. Sea sickness/morning sickness was not the birthday celebration I had imagined (but the rest of the trip was fun!).

This year’s party plans included a nice birthday dinner at home. Brett made a shrimp feast with 3 different shrimp dishes!

Cilantro lime shrimp with jasmine rice.

Shrimp cocktail.

Coconut shrimp with homemade Parrot Bay sauce!

We finished it all up with double chocolate brownies, with a peanut butter layer and topped with peanut butter chips.

He sure does spoil me with delicious food!

He also made us a family video…i just have to share it!

Cheers to a 3-day weekend!

 

This past Saturday, the circus came to town!

It was the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus Built to Amaze Nutz & Boltz Edition. We were excited to finally take Trent to a local event like this. Granted, not much comes around here…which is why we always travel to Orlando or some other nearby city. Plus, we wanted Trent to be a little older in order to be able to sit still in a chair for longer than 5 minutes.

We arrived about 45 minutes before the show was supposed to start for the pre-show down on the floor.

They had some acts come out to the ring and kids could sit around the edge to watch and participate. they also had a little “Backstage preview” area - which was just some animals and props.

I love this next photo for some reason. He’s just sitting there being good and cute. I can’t wait for his sister to join him.

We took a chance at the temporary tattoo booth. Sometimes he likes them, sometimes he wants to rip his skin off in order to get rid of it.

Patiently waiting…

Tatted boy.

After this, he didn’t like it and wanted it off…but luckily forgot about it after a few minutes.

There was a little tightrope set up for kids to walk across. Trent did it twice!

We let Trent pick out a toy. He wanted an elephant, so I showed him a $12 elephant and Brett predictably showed him a more expensive elephant. He picked the one I showed him

After some pre-show fun and purchasing a souvenir and snacks, we took our seats…front row on the floor, baby! The Svensons don’t do it any other way.

Being so close, I started to recognize their faces and could see each character played multiple roles in the show, which I thought was pretty cool.

Wait, what’s this? Is my son, who we couldn’t wait to bring to the circus to see so excited, actually asleep?

Yup, passed the heck out during the loudest part of the show.

Well, the kid next to us fell asleep about 5 minutes into the show, so us parents just laughed about it. He only slept through the intermission and some acts I’m sure he wouldn’t have been interested in anyway.

We tried to wake him up during the dog act, but all he did was point at them and then go back to sleep. We knew the show was winding down when the elephants came out, so we woke him up and he was happy to see the elephants, just like his toy.

The show was about 2 hours, with an intermission in between. We had fun…it was something different to do…but I felt like the price was a little steep. Especially since we had to pay for a seat for Trent and he ended up sitting on my lap the entire time and falling asleep. I was kind of hoping for the type of Ringling Bros and Barnum & Baily Circus I remember from when I was a kid…with 3 rings, multiple acts going on at the same time, more animals, and something with a little more ooomph than a glorified fair circus. But I guess this is what you get when you live in Tallahassee…

Here is a little video of some of the acts…enjoy!