After running kids activities blogs for over two and a half years, I’ve found out a thing or two about what kids like. And kids like Tinkerbell.

No. Kids LOVE Tinkerbell.

Actually, maybe it’s us moms that love her so much. Honestly, if you go watch the original Disney Peter Pan movie, Tink is a horrible jealous stalker-type that embodies all of the worst female stereotypes you can possible imagine. But we love her anyway, don’t we? Maybe it’s because in more recent movies she has cleaned up her act. Or maybe it’s because she’s so freaking cute. Or maybe it’s because we all have a little bad-girl inside of us and it’s way more fun to watch Tinkerbell act that way than it is for us!

Everything Tinkerbell

Anyway, here are some of the posts I have put up over the years that people seem to luuuuvvvvv…..

Tinkerbell Pictures (several early Disney concept sketches through Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure)

Tinkerbell Coloring Pages

Tinkerbell Pumpkin Stencil

Free Tinkerbell Crossword Puzzle

Tinkerbell Party Ideas

Tinkerbell Costumes

Have you seen these ultra cool photo flip books? They are the cutest little brag books – and you can get a 20 page 4″ x 6″ photo book from VistaPrint for free! These are perfect gifts, stocking stuffers, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day presents.

VistaPrint is really the ultimate freebie website, and if you want to add pages or make your book a little bigger, they charge so little it’s almost creepy. You can get a slightly bigger 20 page photo book with 5″ x 7″ images for a crazy $6.49. Back in the days of film processing, I used to pay more than that just for normal prints! And these books include a cover with your choice of pre-designed templates, too.

Want more freebies? Check out these free custom address labels, too!

My kids actually love doing worksheets year-round, especially when they are fun worksheets or have lots of cute pictures on them. I am even able to sneak in plenty of skills review in the summer by giving them worksheets mixed in with their coloring pages.

And on the days that my kids forget their homework, I’ve found alternative worksheets for them to do so that they don’t think they can get out of doing their class assignments! The thought of having to do MY homework in addition to their regular homework usually motivates them to check their homework folders before they leave school!

We have a big collection of printable worksheets on Animal Jr. and on our newest Woo! Jr. Network addition, Classroom Jr.!

Teacher Worksheets to Print

Language Arts Worksheets

Synonyms and Antonyms Worksheets

Fun Math Worksheets

Seasonal and Holiday Worksheets

Spring Math Worksheets: Counting Money

Spring Math Worksheets: Addition Color by Number

Christmas Math Worksheets: Addition and First-Then Logic

Christmas Math Worksheets: Addition and Subtraction

Winter Themed Printable Multiplication Worksheets

Printable Valentine’s Day Multiplication and Fractions Worksheets

You might also like these “How Do Plants Grow?” activities, free paper crafts, or this collection of Where the Wild Things Are lesson plans and activities.

Last night I had a blast being one of the panelists for MomItForward’s Girls Night Out (GNO) on Twitter. Crayola was their sponsor for the evening, and they shared some really great links I thought our Momsational readers would love!

You can get printable Crayola coupons from E-Incentives – right now there is a $1.00 off any Color Wonder product coupon available.

More Crayola Coupons

If those coupons are expired, you can receive a 10% off discount code when you sign up for email updates at CrayolaStore.com! Be sure to check out their CrayolaStore.com sale items, too.

Target.com is offering $5 Off Crayola products if you enter code TC9DEC04 Through 12/24/09

Lastly, if you love coloring like we do, please check out our Woo! Jr. Kids Activities Network, with lots of printables and coloring pages!

OfficeMax is having a back to school sale! Last year they had a $.01 penny sale which they sadly aren’t repeating again this year. But they still have some great deals happening!

I try to stock up at this time of year on school supplies, because you can’t find this stuff cheaper at any other time of the year. My kids go through things like crayons, pencils, and folders so quickly that I’m usually buying them again or dipping into my stash before fall is over.

Office Max Back to School Coupons

7 Days of SAVINGS on School Essentials, This Week at OfficeMax.com Good through 8/7/10

Buy 2, Get 1 FREE on select Supplies + more SAVINGS at OfficeMax.com Good through 8/7/10

Sales Tax Discount Days on Select Back to School Supplies, details at OfficeMax.com Good through 8/15/10

OfficeMax Deals That Do Not Expire

Free Shipping on Orders $50+

Daily Deals at OfficeMax.com

Check out the OfficeMax Deals of the Week

I get all gushy about the stuff at The Container Store. Just walking around in their shops makes me feel more organized. And it’s all so pretttyyyy…. See? I told you I get gushy.

So if you heart The Container Store like I do, jump on this sale, because it ends this Sunday July 12th.

Use coupon code CLUTTERCREW at checkout. Sorry – Expired!

Ongoing Coupons from The Container Store

Save 15% with promo code click15offer when you order online and pick up in store

The Container Store – Special Savings Select Items Up to 50% off!

This last weekend, I had the chance to go to SeaWorld thanks to them and IZEA. I haven’t been to SeaWorld since I was probably ten years old. Any chance to get out of Chicago in February is a good one, but to SeaWorld?! I was saying “SQUEEEE!!!!!” for weeks until the day to leave arrived.

I almost feel bad about how much fun we had on this trip – I don’t really want to rub it in. But we got the VIP tour of the park with front of the line ride access, lunch with the Sharks, dolphin petting and feeding (OMG), and center-stage seats for the Shamu Believe show. I normally try to put some kind of ‘constructive criticism’ into my review posts to keep them real. But this trip? Flawless.

I asked one of our tour guides how much the park has changed in the last 30 years. I knew it was a lot, but didn’t expect her to say, “Hmmm… well, I think the Penguin Experience was here back then. But that would be it”. But if you think the reason they invited us is because of all the new stuff they have added over the years, you would be wrong.

They invited us because of The Manta. I seriously can’t do this ride justice in a post. Ted comes close in this video of our hard hat tour of the construction of this unbelievably cool new roller coaster:

The Manta is opening in May of 2009. And someone who enters this giveaway is going to be one of the first people to ride it!

It is so completely easy to enter this giveaway that it’s not even funny:

1 – Blog Comment:
Leave a comment on this post sharing why you want to take your family or friends to SeaWorld to ride Manta.

2 – Twitter Tweet:
Tweet out why you want to go to SeaWorld and ride Manta in 140 characters or less. Be sure to include http://urlbrief.com/f4fae1, #mantamania and @eMom in your tweet to be registered. For example:

@eMom I want to go to SeaWorld because @tedmurphy made the best Manta video ever! #mantamania http://urlbrief.com/f4fae1
(But you really should put in your own reason, because, well, just because we want to know. )

3 – Blog Post:
Write a post about why you want to take your family or friends to SeaWorld and ride Manta. Be sure to leave a comment or trackback on this post with the URL of your post.

Each tweet, comment or post counts as one registration. A person can enter up to three times. The winner will be chosen at random by IZEA based on all valid entries.

We will be giving away a SeaWorld Schwag Bag to one winner who enters on Momsational. IZEA will choose the grand prize winner randomly from all entries on the 6 blogs participating in the giveaway. The bloggers participating in the giveaway are the ones who went on the SeaWorld trip with me – Julia Roy, Sarah Austin, Lucretia Pruitt, Alex Schek and Ted Murphy. There we are!

The Manta Mania Contest (the “Contest”) is open to anyone who (i) is a legal U.S. resident and legal residents of Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, or Dominican Republic and (ii) is at least eighteen (18) years of age. Official contest rules.

It’s freezing here today, but I had to run out to the store because I have a ton of presents to wrap and no Christmas labels. While I considered cutting out small squares of wrapping paper and writing the person’s name on those, I thought it would be easier just to run to the store. What I didn’t realize until AFTER I got back from the store was that it would’ve been MUCH easier to use the free printable Christmas labels I found below. Ugh! Live and learn. Next year, I will definitely be using these free printable Christmas labels instead of going out into the cold for nothing!

Sites that Offer Free Printable Christmas Labels

Pinkwool.com

HooverWebDesign.com

Vista Print offers hundreds of Christmas designs for their free return address labels! Here’s a tiny sample:

Other Great Christmas Freebies!

Get 1 FREE Photo Calendar at Vistaprint. Choose from Wall or Desk calendar.

FREE VistaPrint Holiday Product Samples! 12 FREE Gifts for family & friends to choose from!

Get 10 FREE Holiday Cards & Save 50% Off the rest. Design in minutes and receive in as few as 3 days. Order Today!

FREE Note Cards from VistaPrint.com!

This giveaway is now closed.

Kmart and Izea have hooked me up this year for Christmas. This week I received $500 to go shopping at Kmart. And I also got $500 to give to one of you – woot!

Kmart's Martha Stewart Decorations

My dirty little secret (literally) is that I am a terrible housekeeper. My home is almost always messy with a sink full of dishes. But I have one domestic gene that seems to emerge only in December. I clean my house, I decorate it to the hilt, I bake cookies (LOTS of cookies), and I buy my one issue of Martha Stewart Living every year. I have every holiday issue she has put out since the publication started – as I can obviously  only handle the thought of being that organized and domestic once a year. So this may sound like a bad TV commercial, but I seriously went straight to the Martha Stewart Christmas section the minute I got in the store.

I kind of put everything in sight into my cart then had to talk myself down and put a bunch of it back. My tendency to get dorky about Christmas verges on embarrassing. (But not this dorky). I decided I didn’t want to drop all $500 on Martha Stewart decorations and got myself out of that section as fast as I could. I did end up with some pine cone garland and new Christmas stockings – I pat myself on my back for my discipline.

Kmart Wool Coat

I shopped on Wednesday, which also happened to be my 40th birthday. I should have gotten Christmas presents… but I have to admit I splurged a bit on me (I deserve it! I turned 40!). So check me out in my new wool winter coat. Soooooo cute. And 40% off! Soooooo cool.

So to appease my guilt (ok, I didn’t feel that guilty), I shopped for the family. I don’t know about you, but my kids somehow seem to always have a growth spurt in the fall. So that when I buy them new clothes for school, by December they are already outgrowing some of them. I swear it happens every year, even though I try to buy big. It irritates the heck out of me, so I bought them each three outfits. Now they will at least not be walking around in floods come January.

Craftsman Reciprocating Saw

Then I walked around and was happily surprised to see that Kmart now sells Sears’ Craftsman tools. My brother owns a auto repair shop and he always asks for Craftsman tools for Christmas. So I got my hubby a Reciprocating Saw because a jerk we let stay with us once took his and sold it for money (I kid you not). But now hubby is happy.

Since I work at home, I thought it would be a good idea to get some new PJs, because that’s pretty much all I wear these days. But I decided after looking around that there was nothing there that I would be comfortable showing you that I bought. Everything was either frumpy and made me look way over 40… or, well, erm… the exact opposite of frumpy.

I know, I know, I’m rubbing my shopping spree in. So let me get to it – you want to know how you can get $500 for your own shopping spree, right? Here’s what you have to do:

There are two ways to enter to win a $500 Kmart Gift Card

ENTRIES ARE NOW CLOSED – GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

1 – Go to Kmart.com and do a ‘virtual’ shopping spree. Tell us what you would buy (with the Kmart Item numbers) that adds up to $500 or less. Make your wish list and leave it on a comment on this post.

2 – If you are on Twitter, simply copy and paste this tweet: “RT @eMom is giving away a $500 Kmart Gift Card on her blog – simply comment or tweet to enter : http://urlbrief.com/7dfb6c”

Each tweet or comment counts as one registration. One entry by blog post comment and one entry by tweet per contest participant.

Winner will be selected via a random number generator on December 17, 2008; deadline for entry is midnight December 16, 2008. Official Holiday Hoopla contest rules from IZEA.

Kmart is the sponsor of this post and of my shopping spree. IZEA is the sponsor of the Kmart $500 Gift Card giveaway. And I thank them both, because this was way fun.

Grab free return address labels from two great places online!

FREE Return Address Labels From VistaPrint

FREE Full Color Address Labels From iPrint

You might also be interested in these free 20 page photo books, too!

Many people know that I founded Sparkplugging back in ‘06, but not everyone knows that I sold it last year. That day I finally felt like a real entrepreneur.

But I digress.

Did you know that they still offer free trade magazines over there? Three that I have subscribed to myself are Website Magazine, Internet Retailer and EContent - all ROCK.

Most of the magazines and white papers that Sparkplugging has are for business owners or execs – well, pretty much all of them are. But techically if you have a website at all, you qualify for several of them – so go grab them, they are FREE!