Today I am loving the internet. As I sit here watching my team play football, I have done almost half of my Christmas shopping. How beautiful! To be fair I should tell you that we keep Christmas really small. Outside of our immediate family, most people get cookies or homemade hot cocoa mix, so there aren't a ton of gifts to buy. But if you are looking for good gifts for the children in your life, I highly recommend checking out this blog. She has some great suggestions for high quality toys with long-lasting appeal and no lead paint. I had already planned to get my boys the parking garage she mentions as their one big present, but there are some other great ideas.

In the spirit of the season, I am sponsoring my first giveaway. I have already written about what our family does for Advent. If you are interested in some fun activities for Advent and Christmas, Before and After Christmas is a great book. It has activities and scripture readings for each day of Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas. I have no idea how to do Mr. Linky, and my HTML savvy husband is elsewhere. So let's do this the old-fashioned way. Leave me a comment and make sure I have an e-mail address to contact you. Help me to make this a real contest by linking to this post on your blog if you think your readers would be interested. The deadline is Tuesday at midnight. I will choose a winner on Wednesday the 28th so that I can get you the book by the time Advent begins. The Holidays have begun. May yours be joyous!

Labels: cool links, giveaways