Good oral hygiene is so important to me. I grew up with it not being a priority in my family, and although I was fortunate enough that my parents took me to the dentist, the habits at home weren't formed and due to that now as an adult, I am making sure that Amber takes better care of her teeth than I did at that age.

During the holiday season, where sugar sweets and chocolates are abundant and the gatherings often turn into late nights, often our children are laid in bed without their teeth getting brushed.

On October 22, Oral-B Stages hosted an event in New York City with Dr. Jennifer Salzer to talk to parents and children about children's oral care.  An informational video with tips from Dr. Salzer was created as a result and I think that you will enjoy watching it.

Read the full story

If you walked into my living room right now, you'd see a plastic tote on the bottom of our book shelf. It is filled with scrapbooking material. On top of that box, is a layer of dust. It hasn't been opened since February. I desperately want to scrap our cruise memories, but with little time between homeschooling, volunteering, household duties and product reviews, it just doesn't get done. There has to be an easier way I thought. And there is. Blurb and their BookSmart Software gave me the chance to get those memories together, and create a professional photo book of my very own.

I chose to make a 24 page 8x10 softcover photo book.

First I downloaded the software. Be patient. It's a large download. What you end up with when it's finished downloading though is a great program, where literally the sky's the limit. After taking a tutorial on how to set up my book, I was ready to create.

The number of page layouts you can choose from is staggering. The process while making your book is so easy. You can change page layouts midstream, change pictures, text, really anything you want to change once you've started is easy to do.


One of the best features is that when adding your pictures or text you will get a (!) if it is too large for the page or if the resolution is too low and won't print well.

The whole process to create my photo book from start to finish took me about 2.5 hours. I did it all in one sitting, but with the handy save feature you certainly can start and come back to it at a later time.

After I submitted my book to Blurb, it was printed and shipped quickly. My 24 page book including shipping only cost $28.44. That is equivalent to or less than what 24 traditional scrapbook pages would cost to make.

I'm a bit of a control freak though and these were my Disney Cruise memories, so the only thing left to wonder after I completed making my photo book was "would Blurb do them justice?" The pages looked great on my preview screen but how about in the actual book?


The quality is amazing! I am so happy with my book. I definitely recommend this service to anyone who is looking to make a book of any kind!

Blurb has so much potential. I can think of a ton of ways you could use this.

* Homeschool - for a yearbook, to publish a story your child has written, a portfolio of your child's artwork

* Vacations - capture your memories in separate books for each vacation or compile them in one

* Celebrations - perfect gifts for silver and golden anniversaries, graduations and wedding experiences

* Genealogies - what a great way to share your family history

I'm sure you can think of a dozen other ways that you would fill a book made with Blurb! You can check out the Blurb Bookstore at www.blurb.com/bookstore for more inspiration.

I'm so excited that when we come back from our transatlantic cruise next year, I can get a great book filled with memories, for a great price.

THANK YOU BLURB!

Please read **About Reviews at the bottom of the page. Read the full story

Momreviews.net has done it again -- that is provided us with a great giveaway for something a lot of us can use -- a Scrapbooking Kit! Three winners will get their choice of a kit from Modzy. I can testify to how cute these kits are, as I have picked up some of the stickers that the kits include at my local Hobby Lobby, and I love them! So if you're like me, and you catalog your memories by scrapbooking, head over to Momreviews.net, and try and get yourself, some new papers and stickers to add to your stash!
Read the full story

I have recently found myself drawn to the craft of digital scrapbooking. I was doing paper scrapbooking for the last couple of months, but have run across so many photos in our digital archives that I have wanted to scrap, but found it too much work to pick out the particular ones I wanted, have them printed and then make pages. After much perusing online, I have found that digital scrapbooking can be just as (if not more) creative and satisfying than traditional scrapbooking.

I stumbled across Diamante Designs where they have what is called a "scraplift challenge". Basically you take the idea of the original scrapbooker and make a page of your own, based on their design.

I decided to participate in this one, keep in mind I have never done this before! It's a page of Genius when we were visiting family, and her and my mom swimming in the pool.

It is considered good etiquette to give credit where it is due in the digital scrapbooking world. The paper elements on the page were a free item from Mandy Mystiques.



Read the full story