Happy Holidays from ParentZing!

Take a deep breath and relax. We’ll see you in 2009.

Here’s a resolution for you: This is the year to make your urban. style. parenting. voice heard!

Click on submit and sling some zing our way to share with readers. Or, contact us and send us ideas for what you’d like to see in the new year. Refresh your memory as to what we’re all about.  Have a laugh with (or at) us.

Then go and eat some more delicious holiday cookies. ‘Cuz zinging with us is wayyyy more important (and a whole lot more fun!) than some resolution about joining a stinky ol’ gym.

Thanks for hanging out with us & cheers to you and yours for a Happy New Year,

The Folks @ ParentZing!

Last Minute Gift for Fashionistas

Have friends or family members who splurge on an expensive purse, only to feel guilty the next day? (Or is that YOU I’m talking about?!)

Regardless, every Little Miss Buyer’s Remorse can now have her cake and eat it too with a gift card from Bag, Borrow or Steal. She’ll You’ll have her your choice of 4,000+ handbags, jewelry, and more from big ol’ bucks brands such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Rent by the week or by the month. Seriously!

So, it’s not too late to buy that friend, sister, Mom or Aunt yourself a gift that’ll have the whole office abuzz in 2009 about their your apparent promotion that allows them you to buy a new, expensive designer purse every couple of weeks!

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ParentZing! Perk: Put those holiday photos to good use at Shutterfly.  Save 25% off of orders of  $100 or more, 15% off orders $50 to $99.99 and 10% off orders $25 to $49.99. Use code HAPPYHOLIDAYS (expires 12/29/08).

Last Minute Gift for Lit-Lovers

You are really coming down to the wire. But no worries, we’ve got a credible last minute gift for your literature-lovin’ friends. Have a look-see at BookSwim. It’s essentially Netflix for books.  They’ve got it all: new releases, best sellers, classics and of course, important to ParentZing! readers: CHILDREN’S BOOKS.  Keep ‘em out as long as you want, no late fees…yada, yada, yada.

Order a gift certificate online and select the date to e-mail the card… and yer done. Pajama shopping at its best.

Free Gift Re-Gift

Forget pulling out your credit card for holiday gifts for others (or yourself). That’s like, soooo pre-economic crisis!

Instead, pull out dem ugly gifts other people have given you over the years and swap ‘em for something you (or someone you know) will actually like.  

Re-gifting? Kinda… but without the worry that you’ll accidentally give your cousin the, er, “beautiful” plaid scalloped-edged apron that your aunt gave you three Decembers ago.

So, enter Freecycle. Membership costs nothin’. And as you might have guessed from the name (or should have), it is “…a place to give or receive what you have and don’t need or what you need and don’t have.”  

Say that 10 times fast.

Then go visit Freecycle and find that big, comfy easy chair you’ve always wanted and offer someone else that treadmill that’s been taunting you from across the room since 2002.  And if you find and give the neighbor that snowblower you thought he always wanted (but didn’t), he can always put it back up for grabs while searching Freecycle for the panini maker that he secretly hoped you were sliding under his tree.

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ParentZing! Perk: Hurry! FCDL20 is the current promo code to get 20% off at Flying Colors Baby. Hey, if you’re gonna spend you might as well save, right?

Eco-Heavenly Gifts

Giving this bracelet as a gift is sure to be a hole in one! (Sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves.)

We interviewed “GreenMarketGirl”
Susan Hilger of  SJHilger Interiors. 
Her enviro-friendly jewelry marries
“feel good” with “look good.” And that’s the perfect marriage, indeed. 

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Q: The eco-cuff bracelets are rockin’! And not only are they unique, you make ‘em out of scrap wood left over from your bigger projects. What’s the deal with that? How the heck did you come up with the idea?

A: Thanks! These bracelets evolved from one of our roadtrip brainstorming events.

We always knew there were great things to be found in our wood waste. It all started when we pulled together a few birdhouses for gifts. Once we gifted them, we couldn’t keep enough of them made. We didn’t want to make them for profit and ruin our fun so we send birdhouse proceeds to Project HALO, a no-kill animal shelter in Charlotte.

The bracelets were our next adventure! And now we’ve developed so many shapes and colors that our veneer waste is down to nil in our wood shop.

 

Cate as Bob. Bet her (his?) jewelry is cool.

Q: For sure some eco-conscious mama must be sporting your bracelets. Maybe Cate Blanchett? She’s seems the type. Did she wear one while she was unveiling her star on the Walk of Fame earlier this month? Come on, tell us who your coolest client is!

A. Our very coolest client is neither Cate nor a famous woman, but a man who chose us as his featured artist to launch his new website, Waypastcrazy.com, his gift to artists. To date, he is by far our biggest client and has sent our Eco-cuffs far and wide, making him very famous in our minds. And who knows, maybe he sent one to Cate Blanchett. I hope so!

 

Gift of Music: JAM for Free

Charity and the JAMband, the award-winning San Francisco group, has a new “Song of the Month” feature on their website. 

For the holidays you can listen to the band’s all-new arrangement of  ”Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”… for free! Played with an indie-rock twist, this version adds new sparkle to an old favorite. It’ll appeal to both big and little elves alike. 

What’s JAM like? Their website describes it best:

 

“What is JAM? The short answer…

JAM is a hootenanny, a hullabaloo, a dance party, a shindig-bash, a festival, a family band, a rain dance, a sun song, a fairy frolic, a wander in the park, a race on the beach, a flitting floating butterfly-bop, a blundering thundering elephant-stomp, a twirling-whirling-swirling dizzy-dee fall-down boogie!

JAM is about making sounds and songs and hooting and hollering and belly laughing and shimmying and swaying and running and jumping and jiving and bouncing with people you love!

JAM is about pushing the furniture to the walls and creating a dancing room in your homes and your hearts, for forever, for inside and out, for back and forth, for now.

JAM is about being real and feeling alive.”

Sounds to me like they capture the holiday spirit ALL year ’round!

 

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Holiday JAMband Sale: All Charity and the JAMband music is on sale now! Select the songs you want to purchase and enter  the discount code TWINKLEJAM to receive 50% off all downloads. (Expires December 30, 2008). 

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More ParentZing! Perks: We’re in the giving mood, so here’s another perk for your holiday shopping pleasure. The Gap is offering $20 off online orders of $100 or more! Use  coupon code GAP20. (Hurry! Expires 11/14/08)

Gifts that Go Up, Up and Away!

Admit it. You’ve never completely lost that desire to be a superhero (or rescued by one).  Well, here’s your chance to satisfy those urges as well as to snag a totally cool holiday gift for your superhero mini-me. We talked to Mariann Stolte, the crafty mom behind LuluBird Boutique. She creates fun and funky personalized superhero capes, the perfect antidote to those boring store-bought costumes and plastic toys.  As Mariann says, at LuluBird Boutique, “only your imagination is the limit!”  

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Q: We love the personalized hero capes that you make for kids. It’s a good thing that you are crafty, because I’m certainly not. Do you really sew each order yourself? How long does it take? (Not that it really matters, because I don’t know how to use a sewing machine anyway and so it’s not like I’m going to attempt it).

A: Well, thank you so much for your kind words. Yes I do sew each one myself. They take about 1 hour start to finish for each cape. I cut out each letter, shadow, symbol and cape piece myself and sew them all. It is so much fun to see the capes when they are done. Some of my clients come up with such great color combos that I would have never thought of.

 

Q: We’re also glad to see that you are making superhero capes for adults. Now you’re talking! Where are the ones for pets? Once you offer those I’ll have my gift list complete for the entire family.  Ok, so people will think we are a little strange when we walk down the street in our capes (dog included) when it’s not Halloween, but we’ll be doing something together as a family and that’s good, right?

A: LOL! Not strange. I always say the family that fights crime together is the family that stays together! We actually make the mini capes for children’s teddy bears, dolls, etc. I have had a few clients purchase them for the pets; we just make the ribbon a bit longer to tie around their necks.

Kum Bah Ya Gifts

Do your responsible shopping online and make the world a less toxic place! Make a tax-deductible donation of $135 NOW $99 to the Environmental Working Group in honor of a friend or family member and they’ll receive a snazzy “green” gift bag that includes: 

1. A 27 oz. Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottle — the perfect solution to using less plastic and avoiding contaminated bottled water
2. Jumbo Enviro-Tote made from 100% recycled plastic, printed with EWG’s pollution solutions
3. 6-piece Pyrex glass container set (no more Tupperware!)
4. Crummy Brothers organic chocolate chip cookies
5. $25 in free product coupons, plus…
6. EWG’s most popular tools for healthy living

Best Kids’ Gift, Hands Down (And Up. And Down. And Up…)

Forget video games. Forget movies on DVD. It’s time to harken back to the good ol’ days when creativity and imagination were the core elements of kids’ gifts.  

Enter The Sock Puppy Kit from famed puppeteer John Kennedy. It comes complete with all the materials your little puppet master needs to make the super-cute canine. The instructions are clear and easy, but if you like visual aids there’s actually an online video from Activity TV that demonstrates how to bring the pup puppet to life.

Wait! There’s more! You get a free set of Ginzu knives with each purchase.  (Oh, come on, get a sense of humor… I’m kidding, here).  

But really, the kit does include oodles of extra goodies like a CD packed with original stories and music, paper farm animal puppets to use with Sock Puppy when performing the “Sock Puppies on the Farm” show for family and friends, and stickers for your star-in-training to promote his or her performances. And dang, that John Kennedy’s clever: Even the box it all comes in becomes part of the play as Sock Puppy’s very own dog house.