Jinxyisms

I’m usually such a procrastinator that it seems almost unrealistic that I’m thinking about holiday cards at the end of October. I guess the fact that I had such a good experience with Shutterfly last year for my holiday cards helps, and since they offered to do a giveaway with me that really gets me to move.  I love everything about the whole process of making and sending out holiday cards. I love finding Lily the perfect outfits, I love setting up a great holiday backdrop, whether it be a tree and presents or something more outdoorsy.  I love getting Lily to play and have fun, especially in a way that makes for great pictures.  I really love finding my favorite pictures and then finding the perfect card to show them off.

I have some criteria for a great holiday card that I use: For one, I prefer a flat card over a folded card. Flat cards are easier to put on the fridge or hang on the wall by my desk. Since that is what I like, I assume everyone likes that too. 

I also like cards that have a number of pictures on them. I guess I just like being able to see a lot of Lily pictures.

I try to stay away from cards that say “Merry Christmas”. My Mom celebrates Yule, so she doesn’t really like getting Christmas cards and for me the card is more about the Holidays as a whole more than Christmas anyway.

I think those are pretty much my rules for cards, they aren’t hard and fast, but they are my guidelines.  One of the things that I love and hate about Shutterfly is that they have such a huge selection of cards that it’s hard to narrow them down to “the one”. For right now I think I this is “the one”, but we’ll see how things look tomorrow.

(Photo credit: Shutterfly.com)

Now for the giveaway:

Shutterfly was very generous and offered 3 Jinxyisms.com readers a certificate for 25 free Holiday cards of your choice.  To enter just leave me a comment answering the following question:

Do you have any criteria for holiday cards that you use?

Or just tell me Hi, or what you are making for breakfast. What ever floats your boat.

The giveaway ends on I will use random.org to select the winners on November 11, 2011 at Noon.  I’ll use random.org to select the winner and email them.  Please be sure to leave me an email address.  If the winner doesn’t get back to me in 3 days I’ll choose another winner.  Open to US residents only. Sorry everyone else.

Disclosure: Shutterfly compensated me for this review, but all opinions expressed are my own.

A few weeks ago we welcomed a good friend into the wonderful world of parenthood.  I am so happy for them and wish them all the best in the world.

A few months back the excited Dad to be asked me if I had any baby info for them.  I told him how I think breastfeeding is one of the best parenting decisions I ever made, I shared how easy making baby food was, how I love sharing my bed with my baby and how I love babywearing and cloth diapering.  I meant to make a list of my favorite, most useful gear but neglected to do that until today.

You can go to almost any Mommyblog around and get their list of their favorite baby gear so this isn’t anything new, but these are my favorites.

Cloth diapers: bumGenius3.0.  I love the diapers but next time I’ll go for snaps over velcro, the velcro on Lil’s died after a year and a half of use.  I also have a few other kinds of cloth diapers including some Bum Genius Flip diapers and some other diaper covers.

Some of my Bum Genius diapers

Lily in a Bum Genius Flip diaper

Babywearing: Ergo.  I put off buying an Ergo because of the expense.  Now that I have it I love it and feel it paid for itself within a month of having it.  In all honesty I love my Ergo and can’t live without it, but I also have and love a Kozy Carrier Mei Tai and a great Comfy Joey ringsling.  I can tell you for sure that I will want a new lovely ringsling when we have baby #2.  My current one is great, but it’s kind of a scratchy cotton and I will want to upgrade to a better material.  I haven’t tried them but I’ve heard great things about the slings from Sleeping Baby Productions.

Us using the Ergo

Us using the ringsling

Swaddling: Miracle Blanket and Aden + Anais blankets.  I loved the Miracle Blanket for when Lil was small.  Once she got too long for the MB I started using a Aden and Anais blanket.  Don’t tell anyone but I swaddled Lil till she was 17 months old, it worked really well for us and I saw no reason to hurry it to be over.

The Aden and Anais blanket can be used for lots of things. Including swing cover.

I swear she loved being swaddled. She just wanted to be picked up and not photographed right this second. Again in her Aden and Anais blanket.

Breastfeeding: A good bra, a Boppy and a Nursing Cover.  I have never bought a nursing bra better then a Target bra and I wish I would have spent the money on something nicer back when Lil was tiny.  My bras wear out really quickly and most of the time aren’t ever super comfortable.  Do yourself a favor and buy a good bra. I loved my Boppy and used it all the time when Lil was small.  Waldo used it all the time too.  The Boppy was also great for propping Lily up.  The Boppy was also great for using as a photo prop.  I have a ton of pictures of her on the blanket covered Boppy.  I have a nursing cover and use it on the occasion that I nurse in public.  Lily hated it, but I think that was partly because I only used it occasionally so she never got used to it.

There's a Boppy under that blanket.

Pouty Lil on her Boppy

Car Seat:  Because Lil was so darn small even the head cushion that came with her car seat was useless so I looked around and found the Kiddopotamus Snuzzler from Amazon.  I was so happy when we got it.  It is nice and soft and kept Lil from rolling around in her seat.  We also got her a Car seat swaddler for a couple of reasons. Firstly, she was born in NW Montana in December and no matter how many blankets I put over her I always felt she would be cold. Secondly, she was not a fan of being in her car seat, but she loved being swaddled so I hoped that being swaddled in the car seat would help. It didn’t really but I felt she was warm so that’s something.

Sleeping in her seat with the Snuzzler

Swaddled and snuzzled

Bath time: Lil wasn’t a fan of getting a bath when she was little (do you see a pattern here? She wasn’t a fan of anything that wasn’t my arms). Because she wasn’t happy, she was very wiggly and I never felt comfortable giving her a bath in one of the hard plastic baby bath tubs. Amazon to the rescue again. I got her a Safer Bather Infant Bath Pad. It made all the difference in the world. Oh, she still hated her baths but I felt they were safer. For the record, I started taking a bath with Lil and things drastically improved.

Cool baby bath mat thingy

Baby Monitor:When I was filling out my baby registry I added a normal old school audio only baby monitor.  People told us we’d want a video monitor, but I doubted it.  I knew Lil was going to sleep in our room so I figured she’d be out of our sight for such short amounts of time that the expense of the video monitor was just too high and also it seemed silly.  Did I really need to watch my kid sleep through a tiny monitor, I thought not.  Boy was I wrong.  I won a Summer Infant Handheld Color Video Monitor from Metropolitian Mama (I love Steph) and she told me that I’d love the monitor and Steph did not lie.  I love the monitor and it is the greatest thing ever (or close to that). Because Lil is not the greatest sleeper, it is great to have the video monitor because I can tell if she’s really awake or just tossing and turning.  With the audio monitor I’m sure I went in and woke her up at least a few times because I thought she was awake but was just turning or something.

I’m sure there were other things that I loved and kept me sane with a infant but these are the most important things.  Tune in soon for part 2 for the baby things I hated and could have lived without.

Again, congratulations to Jesse, Jamison and Teagen.  Much love!!

I paid for all of the items listed here except the monitor.  Some of the links are for my Amazon Association and I guess if you buy something from the links I might get a penny or two.

I have a terrible relationship with cards; Christmas or other wise. I’m trying to change that but it is a very old relationship and those are the hardest to end. You see, I know that someone’s birthday is coming up or that December is looming near so I add cards to my shopping list. If I’m lucky I find the perfect card on the first try if not it probably won’t get bought at all. I will totally forget to add it to the next week shopping list or I will forget to look for it when I’m at my computer. Lets say that the stars align and mars is in the whatever house,  I will actually get a card home; my desk pile will be its final resting place. I almost never remember to send the cards out. When we were packing to move I found at least 7 unused cards; which is sad because I am a pretty good card picker. Now that I live within 35 miles of 95% of my family I have managed to give out a few birthday cards but usually very late.

Anyway this year is no different. Here it is December 7th and I haven’t ordered our Christmas cards, heck I haven’t taken our picture yet.  To save myself a few bucks I decided to join the bloggers reviewing Snapfish, in return I get 50 free cards. Here are a few cards that I will consider once I get that perfect picture taken.

I like the colors and the words ring true for me

Simple and sweet

Different

I love all the designs that you can choose from, and such a great price range.

Snapfish also offers all types of other photo products.  I wish I hadn’t ran out of time to get invitations to Lily’s upcoming birthday party, I totally would have ordered these for her Snowman party.

They offer photo wall calendars.  I have always wanted to make one of these up.  I can just imagine how cute a Lily calendar would be.

They also offer great photo books.  My cousin’s wife made one for my aunt and the book is just beautiful.

If you are a blogger you could get 50 free Christmas cards if you write a blog post about it.  Way easy.  But hurry because like everything else in my life I’m almost too late for this too, the deadline to register is December 10th.  Hurry.

Like I said in my review of AppleCheeks diapers I have been cloth diapering for about 9-10 months now and love it. I love it so much that I just added some new diapers to my stash – in fact I’m sitting here waiting anxiously for the UPS man, but I’ll talk more about these later. Right now I want to talk about a Mom’s favorite subject, POOP. I swear I have never in my 34 years talked about or thought about poop as much as I have in the last 14 months. When was the last time she pooped? Is she pooping too much or little? Is it to solid or runny? The questions go on and on but the most pressing one for a cloth diaperer is what do you do with it once it’s in a diaper?

See the silver thing attached to the toilet? It’s a diaper sprayer. Do me a favor and don’t look at the dirty floor, I cleaned it right after I took the shot. That sprayer is what makes poopy cloth diapers a non-issue. You hold the diaper over the toilet and use the sprayer to knock the poop off. The sprayer eliminates the need to dunk and swish the diaper in the toilet. The diaper sprayer takes just a couple of minutes to install and take out if necessary and best of all requires no tools.

My diaper sprayer started leaking a few months ago so Waldo unhooked it. I contacted the manufacture through their website, they responded by the next day and asked me what the problem was. Well by this time I had forgotten where the leak was coming from so Waldo hooked the sprayer back up. When he turned it on the little handle shot off and water sprayed Waldo, the walls and the floor. It was pretty funny and I’m really glad that he’s such a good sport. I emailed Gene from Mini Shower and let them know, they asked for pictures because it wasn’t something they had heard of before. I sent the pictures and they shipped a replacement that day. I hooked the new sprayer up right after it got delivered and Lily put it to the test because she’s helpful like that. During the month or two that my sprayer was broken (because I’m a professional procrastinator and it took me forever to figure out what to do about it) I almost quit cloth diapering because it was so frustrating to deal with the poop.

**This isn’t a sponsored post, I just really believe in the diaper sprayer and want other people to know how cool they are.

I have been cloth diapering Lily for about 9 months now and I love it. I find them easy to use, Lily has had almost no rashes and they look darn cute.

One of the reasons I wanted to use cloth from the beginning is the money saving aspect. Yes you have to put out for a large investment in the beginning, but I don’t have to work diaper money into our already tight budget each month. Because of this I have only really used the diapers we bought before Lily was born and I don’t have a huge stash of fluffy choices like I’ve seen on other people’s blogs. I have been very happy with the pocket diapers we bought, but was very excited to have a chance to try out something new and different. AppleCheeks sent me one size 2 cover in the lovely St. Lucia color, a bamboo insert and a wetbag.

The cover has a wonderful wide envelope opening that is more in the center of the diaper rather then on one end like the other diapers that I have. I really like this because they seem easier to stuff and I don’t have to unstuff it before I throw it in the washer. At first I was skeptical that the insert would come out on its own, but it does every time, I think this is my favorite feature of all. AppleCheeks are also unique in that you don’t have use it as a pocket diaper, you can simply set the inset in the cover; that way when the kiddo needs to be changed you just put a new insert and reuse the cover. I really like that aspect and use it mostly when I’m getting close to needing to wash diapers again, it’s a great way to stretch your stash. Another nice thing about AppleCheeks diapers is the size range, they are one size diapers but the sizes are generous. They come in two sizes, size 1 fits from 7 – 20lbs, and size 2 fits from 20 – 40lbs.

The diaper I was sent to review is size 2 and Lily only weighs 18 pounds so it isn’t a perfect fit, however it impressed me every time I put it on her as there were no leaks and that is what diapers are all about.

While AppleCheeks offers a great selection of solid colors I would love to see some prints or patterns.  I think some polka dot diapers would be adorable.  AppleCheeks are on the higher end cost wise but they are very well made and worth the cost. I am certain that this diaper will last forever and Lily’s future siblings will be wearing it.

AppleCheeks provided me with a diaper to review, all opinions are my own.