It's almost cruise time, and that means packing and unpacking and packing again!  With all the little things we'll need, I want to be sure that should we lose misplace them, and a kind soul finds them, we'll get them back.  This is where the handiness of Label Daddy comes in.

I make encourage Amber to label the things that she takes with her places for two reasons.  1. Many of her friends have the same things she does (iPod, Nintendo DS etc) in the same colors and 2. If it does make its way to the lost and found hopefully someone will see the name on it and return it.

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I don't think it matters how old the kids get, there is something magical about building your own teddy bear.

Each year our local Girl Scout council takes a trip to the Mall of America with girls ranging from 6th to 12th grade (and their Moms!).  We live in a pretty small city, and don't have a lot of the stores and shops that bigger cities do.

One of the things the girls are all eager to do is make a visit to Build-A-Bear Workshop in the M.O.A..  They will line up and wait, just to make their teddies, monkeys, kitties, etc., as a memory of their weekend at the mall and to add to their collection.
The great thing about Build-A-Bear is that you can order online too, so if you don't have a Workshop near you, the classic and new models are still available to you, as well as all the fun accessories to deck your stuffed ones out!

This season Build-A-Bear Workshop has a group of bears that will delight the youngest to the oldest Star Wars fan!  The group is all here; Darth Vader Dimples Teddy (who is not nearly as scary masqueraded as a teddy!), Anakin Skywalker Read Teddy, Clone Captain Pawsome Panda and Jedi Knight Champ-A Champion Fur Kids.  These lightsaber wielding bears start at $37.00 and would be a keepsake for years to come.

We received the Darth Vader Dimples Teddy, and he comes housed in the classic Build-A-Bear Workshop house.  As is the case with all the Build-A-Bear stuffies, he is well constructed and is a quality toy.  While we didn't get a chance to make him ourselves, Build-A-Bear online,has so many offerings, choosing a unique and special gift for your recipient, shows just as much love as if you or they made it at a Workshop.  This toy will be cuddled a lot, and proudly displayed for a long time.

Already have a bear and just want to purchase some accessories?  All of the Star Wars outfits can be bought for an existing teddy for $15.00 each.  I personally think it would be cool to have an Anakin outfit for Dimples as well, so we could act out the before and after scene with the Darth Vader outfit, how fun would that be?!

Until December 16th, Build-A-Bear.com is offering Free Shipping on a purchase of $35 or more using the code 94590 at checkout.

If Star Wars isn't your thing, you may want to check out their Christmas selection of stuffies, ranging from puppies as elves to Frosty the Snowman.

Visit Santa's Build-A-Bear Workshop online to join the fun!

I received a complimentary Darth Vader Dimples Teddy from Build-A-Bear Workshop for the purpose of this post.

Comedy is waiting for your family in the new 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment DVD and Blu-Ray 'Aliens in the Attic'.

It’s summer vacation, butthe Pearson family kids are stuck at a boring lake house with their nerdyparents.  That is until feisty, little, green aliens crash-land on theroof, with plans to conquer the house AND Earth!  Using only their wits,courage and video game-playing skills, the youngsters must band together todefeat the aliens and save the world -- but the toughest part might be keepingthe whole thing a secret from their parents!

Favorite actors like Ashley Tisdale and Austin Robert Butler for the young viewers and Doris Roberts and Kevin Nealon for us "older" viewers.

Amber and Hubby laughed hilariously at the slapstick mind control.  And one can't help but love the little sister and her sock monkey.  Amid the comedy hi-jinx there are even a couple of lessons learned.

We watched this with a group of Girl Scouts this past week-end and the middle school/high school aged girls (and their troop leaders!) enjoyed it too.

This PG DVD is family approved by the Dove Foundation, which always is a plus in my book.  Movies approved by them mean that if I am unable to watch with my daughter and her friends, I can pretty confident that it is alright for them to watch on their own.

Some of the DVD and Blu-Ray bonus features include

• Introduction to the film by Ashley Tisdale
• Gag reel (always a favorite in our home)
• Meet the Zirkonians

And More!!!  The Blu-Ray includes a digital copy of the movie so you can watch in on a laptop or upload it to your Ipod too!

Take a peek at a trailer

Move over Mystery Inc. there's a new game in town. Adina's Deck is a group of 8th grade girls, thrown together through a circumstance of cyber-bullying and make a club where they are determined to defend the innocent and root out the guilty, using their technology skills.

I actually came across these dvds while doing a search on the internet for games to play with a deck of cards. I was impressed by the video trailers and the topics the dvds were based on and bookmarked the site. I found myself gravitating back to it the next day, and sent an e-mail to Debbie Heimowitz one of the founders of the series, along with Jason Azicri, asking if I could review these for my blog.

As a mother of a teenager I'm concerned about what takes place on the internet. Amber is involved in message boards, facebook and forums. We try and watch who she talks with and what she says, but on the other side there is a point to where we have to trust her as well. We are constantly pitching the lectures advice of how to stay safe online, but in all reality we realize that a lot of times she is probably tuning us out. Often our children will listen or take heed of an issue from another source, especially if it is from someone or something that resembles their peer group. Adina's Deck is just such a resource.

Two episodes of Adina's Deck deal with safety and the consequences of cyber-bullying and an online crush. Issues that are very prevalent for today's tweens and teens. Since technology is often given to very young children they are immersed early on in situations that often require more maturity than they have. The lessons these dvds teach is that there are consequences to both sides of the issues and when in doubt talk to an adult about it.

The third episode is the one that really caught my eye. It is about plagiarizing. As a homeschooling parent there are certain topics that I know need to be dealt with, but sometimes don't get discussed because of the schooling situation we've chosen. One of them is plagiarism. We've just started delving into research papers as we round out middle school and are preparing for many more in high school. With the internet becoming more and more of a source of information, teaching our children to cite and record their findings is very important. Not just because they may get caught, but because it is theft.

I think these dvds are right on the mark and are up to date with the issues they cover as well as the portrayal of the characters. They are perfect for a group setting (classrooms, homeschool co-ops, girl scouts etc) or home viewing. They are very well done and resemble the shows your tween or teen may already watch on Nickelodeon or The Disney Channel. They've been officially picked for many film festivals and have won awards. There is enough humor in them to keep the kids watching through the entire episode and plenty of meat in them to discuss the topics with them afterward.

Each dvd is $19.95 or you can purchase the 3 as a set for $39.95.

This is what Amber thought: The characters were really good, the issues are serious but they are put out in such a way that makes them enjoyable, and I really liked Clara's dad's sock puppet.

(Umm..yeah, the sock puppet if you want to know more about that, I guess you'll have to get the dvds!)

Please read **About Reviews at the bottom of the page.

Debbie Heimowitz is generously giving away a set of the 3 dvds to a reader here on my blog!

To enter the giveaway visit Adina's Deck and tell me who would be watching this dvd and which one they think they'd like best (please give the full name of the dvd).

For Extra Entries:

1. Leave a comment with an idea you would like to see for a future episode of Adina's Deck.
2. Follow me on twitter and tweet about this giveaway (this can be done daily).
3. Blog about this giveaway leaving a link back to my blog.
4. Add my button to your blog.
5. Follow my blog publicly.

This giveaway is open to residents of the US ages 18+, and ends on July 22nd, 2009 at 11:59 pm cst.

We love taking video of our vacations and special events...although most people will never see them. That's mostly because getting them off the tape and editing them and burning them on to a dvd is time consuming and frankly with the software we currently own not simple. I really have been wanting to share more of the pictures and videos I take in a unique way with friends and family, and so when I had the opportunity to try muvee Reveal I jumped on it.

When it comes to simple muvee Reveal is in a class by itself. This is such an easy to use program your children, or better yet my mother, could use it. Not only for videos though, muvee Reveal can take your digital stills and make an Oscar winning performance out of them!

muvee Reveal's interface is functional and pretty much self explanatory. You choose from your device or files which photos or video to add, you choose a style, you can add music and then you can view your creations. Yes it is just that easy.

The only problem I had in creating my movie (which is actually four short clips spliced together, pretty seamlessly I might add), was getting the original sound on them. After a quick Google search, I found my solution and was good to go.

You need to have quite a bit of room on your hard drive if you are going to download this program. While it may not provide some of the features of other movie making programs, muvee Reveal's ease and quick delivery and price of $79.95 makes it more usable than the other program we own. My computer did crash a couple of times while using it, but really it is a great program and it didn't frustrate me as it would normally, just because I knew that it would not be horribly time consuming to get my project together even with the crashes.

Take a look at the movie I created:

Please read **About Reviews at the bottom of the page.

I am giddy to tell you that I am able to give 2 muvee Reveal CDs away to my readers.

To enter tell me in the comments who you would give this software to if you are one of the winners. (You must do this or extra entries will not be counted)

Leave a separate comment for each extra entry you are eligible for.

* 1 Extra Entry - Subscribe to my RSS feed or by e-mail (or let me know you already are)
* 1 Extra Entry - Follow my blog publicly (or let me know you already are)
* 1 Extra Entry - Favorite my blog on Technorati and leave your username
* 1 Extra Entry - Follow me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway leave your link to the tweet
* 1 Extra Entry - Kirtsy this post
* 2 Extra Entries - Write a blog post about this giveaway with a link back to to my blog, leave the permalink to your post

This giveaway will run until 11:59 pm cst May 13th. Open to U.S. Residents 18+ only. Winners will have 48 hours after they have been contacted to supply me with mailing information or an alternate winner will be chosen.

Check out more giveaways this week hosted at Mom Most Traveled during her Give It Away Now! Blog Carnival.

Well we're rounding out that time of year. Girl Scout Cookie Sales that is.

I'm just glad that Hubby Genius sold her quota at Hubby's work this year. That means we don't need to have a plethora of boxes around our place. Those cookies aren't the healthiest of snacks, although I do enjoy a Thin Mint once in a while.

Here are a couple of pictures of Genius and her best friend Smart Girl at the kick off rally a few weeks ago. I laugh, because they gave Genius the "Shortbread" costume -- she is somewhat tiny! They made sure that everyone knew the "Cookies Were Here" (yes that's a snow bank).

As some of you may know, Genius received a Fuji Digital Camera last April for her 12th birthday. We bought it at Wal-Mart for a fantastic price in a bundled pack for $71.00 on clearance. It was purchased with money from all three of the grandparents. She was so excited to receive it.

In November when we went to the Mall Of America with the girl scouts, out of the blue, the lcd screen went all scrambled. She was in tears over it. We packaged it up and sent it off to Fuji to get fixed under warranty. They informed us that it would cost us $62.00 to fix it (plus we had paid $8.00 to FedEx it to them), because the lcd screen was cracked. Yes, and we replied so, you won't fix it under warranty? Nope, because it won't break unless undue force was placed upon the screen, and that is not covered. ARGH. No undue force was placed upon the screen it wasn't dropped or anything it just broke (most likely due to shoddy manufacturing). So they wanted us to pay as much to fix it, as we originally paid for the camera! So we told them no thank you. This all happened December 30th.

New Year's Eve, a FedEx overnight package arrives on our doorstep. It's the broken camera returned to us. Fuji OVERNIGHTED it to us. At their expense. What? How ridiculous. That probably cost them almost as much as just having fixed it, and keeping a customer happy. NO MORE FUJI products in this home.

Anyway now Genius needs a new camera, and I've been looking at one of those Flip Ultra Video Camcorder things for her. What would even be nicer for me, would be if I could snag one on sale, or free! I Never Grew Up blog has one up for grabs, if you comment on the blog. If you want to try and win one too, head on over to I Never Grew Up and enter.

Good luck!

Well Genius and I are back from the Girl Scout trip to the Mall of America

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I'm so excited, in just under two weeks, Genius and I get to go with Smart Girl and her mom for a quick trip to The Mall of America!

Every year the local Girl Scout council takes a couple of buses to Minneapolis for two days and allow us to run wild! Last year we attended as guests of Smart Girl, this year since Genius is a full fledged Girl Scout herself, we were guaranteed a spot to go!

The highlights of this trip shall be:

1) Ikea <---- woot! the only time I get to go!! Genius's bedding was all purchased there last year. I love the European styling of the products.

2) Lush <--- Can we say 100x better than Bath and Body Works? Again, no Lush stores in podunk.

3) Crocs <--- Okay you can buy Crocs here, but we don't have a Crocs store. I'm looking at getting some of the fancier ones, for church and formal attire. I've never seen them in stores here.

4) Rainforest Cafe <---- Yummy! One of our very favorite places to eat. We stop at one whenever we can

So any of you that live in larger metropolitan areas, and know of hip stores that we don't have in podunk type places, please tell me where I need to shop!

This is the first year that Genius has been involved in Girl Scouts. Her best friend Smartgirl has been bugging her since second grade to join her troop. Genius finally decided to take her up on it, and as a 7th grader, join up!

Each girl in the troop (there are 10) gets to choose which badge they want to earn. Isabelle chose the first one: Jewelry Badge (much to Genius's disdain!).

So the first week they looked at different magazines found jewelry cut out pictures and made a folder for the rest of the badge work.

On Friday they all congregated at the Mall. Yikes - 10 tweenage girls together at the mall! Smartgirl's mother is the troop leader, and her co-leader was not available for the evening, so I was asked to step in. Luigi joined us for the evening, so I really actually corralled him for most of the evening (honestly, I think I got the better end of the deal!). At the mall they went to jewelry stores to check out different types of clasps, styles, cuts and gems. The managers and workers in the store, were sooo nice and patient with the girls.

The next portion of the badge is jewelry making -- they will be making a couple of pieces, one to keep and one to give away.

They have to make a piece of jewelry, to bring that evening from home, that they spent no money on. Basically recycling any household goods to make a jewelry piece from. So I ask you any ideas? If you have one or more please comment, and I'll pass them on to Genius!

Photo by Adrian Midgely