It’s a Princess Revolution! (Holiday Gift Guide 2012)

Do you have any little princesses in YOUR house?

If your little daughters love pretending to be princesses but maybe you are sick of all the traditional princess characteristics (dainty, catered to, delicate etc) than you might want to take notice of this music CD. Princess Revolution does not contain your average songs.

Now you can empower your little princess. My almost 7 year old is a bit too old for this CD while my 5 year old says she enjoyed it. I’d recommend for ages 2-5.

Listen to the songs for yourself!

Princess Revolution CD from Moey’s Music Party has received some awards already including Parent’s Choice Gold Award 2012 and Seal of Approval from The Toy Man.

You can get the CD from the online store for only $13.98!

*Disclosure: I received the product mentioned above free of charge by the company or PR representative for evaluation purposes. No other compensation was provided. See my Disclosure Policy for more information.

REVIEW/GIVEAWAY: My Friendship Bracelet Maker and My Ribbon Barette Maker (Christmas Gift Guide)

I have the COOLEST toy for the school age girl on your Christmas list!

What girl doesn't like to make friendship bracelets or wear pretty barrettes? Well okay I'm sure there are some girls not interested in this but my girls sure are!

Now your child can make friendship bracelets with ease and without putting a hole in her pants by pinning the thread with a safety pin to her knee (how I made bracelets when I was younger.)

The Friendship Bracelet Maker has a clip to hold the bracelet in place, spaced out slots for each of the strings to keep them untangled and a slide out tray with multi coloured threads and instructions. The instructions tell you how to do a basic bracelet but you can check out the website for more patterns via video or pdf.

My girls are a bit young for friendship bracelets at 4 and (almost) 6 but they were able to do it with lots of help. I still want to try making one myself. Just by helping them though I was able to see how nice it was to have the strings all separated instead of all jumbled up! No more pinning it to your pants either.

My Ribbon Barrette Maker comes with 8 metal clips that you can turn in to a beautiful 2 colour hair decoration with beads that hang down. It comes with many different coloured ribbons and beads and the 8 clips. The top part has the spacers to hold your ribbons in place when they are not in use and a barrette holder for the barrette.

My girls loved the barrette maker and even at ages 4 and (almost) 6, they were able to make their own barrette with a bit of help. My only qualm is that the barrette don't stay put in my girl's hair but then they have very thick crazy hair and they roll all over the place when the play. I suppose if it was in their hair during an event where they would be sitting nice the whole time, it would stay in better. 

*Disclosure: I received the product(s) mentioned above free of charge by the company or PR representative for evaluation purposes. No other compensation was provided. See my Disclosure Policy for more information. 

Be The Voice: Instilling Values in Our Girls #BarbieICanBe

I deal with the challenge of showing girls that they are important, smart and special all the time. Not only do I have two daughters of my own but I am a Girl Guide Leader. I work with Sparks (Ages 5-6), Brownies (ages 7-8) AND Guides (Ages 9-11.) In fact the National Service Project for Girl Guides this year has been Empowering Girls. The Mission of Girl Guides of Canada - Guides du Canada is: Girl Guides of Canada-Guides du Canada enables girls to be confident, resourceful and courageous, and to make a difference in the world.

It can be hard at times instilling the values I want my Girl Guides and my daughters to adopt but then I think of how not empowered I felt as a young girl and I want to make sure I do my part. My mother was great, don't get me wrong. She always told me how special and smart I was and at first, I always believed it. However starting about grade 4, life got hard for me at school. I had no real friends, was teased all the time and made to feel like I wasn't a good person. It got to the point where more people were negative towards me than were positive. I don't want my girls to ever go through that.

Barbie has a new initiative dedicated to helping moms with raising their daughters to be smarter, stronger, happier and more fulfilled. Be The Voice features Canadian Parenting Coach Terry Carson sharing parenting tips and ideas each month. Check it out!


*Disclosure: I am participating in the Barbie I Can Be campaign by Mom Central Canada on behalf of Mattel Canada. I received compensation as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own. See my Disclosure Policy for more information. 

World Thinking Day 2010

I'm a little late in posting this but today is World Thinking Day. The founders of Scouts and Girl Guides, Lord Robert Baden-Powell and Olave Baden-Powell had a joint birthday today.

On this day we remember our Guiding and Scouting friends around the world and participate in fun events to celebrate.

You can find out more at World Thinking Day. Or you can get the short version at Wikipedia.

Each year has a theme. The theme for 2010 is "together we can end extreme poverty and hunger"

In honour of that theme, please at least find the time to visit The Hunger Site and donate for free.

Discover Your Daughter - for parents of girls ages 8-12

The creator of Discovery Girls magazine has created a website called Discover Your Daughter. It's for parents of girls ages 8-12 and the girls themselves.

There are articles of interest to parents and tweens. Parents can register for the site themselves to leave comments on stories or to ask or answer questions in a format a bit similar to Yahoo! Answers. No information is collected for children. The articles tweens may like are there to read and they cannot leave any comments.

The website is fairly new but articles and features will be added overtime. Most of the articles for tweens were originally printed in the magazine.

Here's a little of what Discover Your Daughter had to say:

We share:
How to help your daughter learn to identify & stand up to bullies.
What she thinks parents don’t understand about her life, and what to do about it.
How parents can teach her to use technology wisely, so she’s not ruled by text messaging, IMs, email, etc
How to know where to draw the line on privacy?  How much should tweens have?
How to help her deal with jealousy, disappointment, and failure so she grows into a resilient, strong, confident young woman
How to help her to love and accept her body
How to build a foundation so she’ll make good relationship choices now and for the rest of her life

There is also a free email newsletter you can sign up for and you can follow Discovery Girls Magazine on Twitter or Facebook.

Also there is currently a contest to win a spot on the back of a Discovery Girls magazine that is open until March 1, 2010. There are other prizes too. Check out the Ultimate Mom Daughter Contest for more information.

If you're a parent of a tween girl you should check out this site, it seems very helpful!

New Moon Girls

I was introduced to New Moon's new site, New Moon Girls which is a safe, advertising-free online community for girls ages 8-12.

For the price of $29.95 they get 12 months of unlimited acess, 6 issues of New Moon Girls print magazine, they can share poetry, artwork, video and other creations, exclusive member extras, fully moderated chats and so much more.

Here is more information from New Moon Girls:

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As women we know that girls are bombarded every day by disrespectful, exploitive media that can make them feel confused and powerless. As a parent, it can feel overwhelming.

Research shows that one of the best ways to counteract negative media is to put girls in the “driver’s seat” as media creators. That’s what New Moon’s been doing for sixteen years. And it works. Every week I hear from young women who subscribed to our award-winning magazine when they were girls. This recent email from Marit Knutson is typical: “I am a New Moon "grad" so to speak. Just wanted to drop a line and say thank you. I can't tell you how transformative New Moon was for me as young girl. I had an awareness of issues that girls have to face, and felt empowered by the mag.”

Now, with NewMoonGirls.com, even more girls worldwide can make their own media (every day if they want!) and share it with each other. They learn more about themselves and about the world while having great fun and connecting.

Giving every girl the chance to discover, create and share with other girls worldwide is my passion. I hope you will visit our site and check it out. Callista, if you like what you find, please help us spread the word about the priceless gift of creativity and empowerment that New Moon provides to girls ages 8-12. It changes their lives and that can change our world for the better.
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I checked out the site, what you can see for free and it looks like a really good place to be. I was already familiar with New Moon as a girl's magazine written by girls for girls so this is just an improvement. If you have girls ages 8-12 I encourage you to check it out.

NOTE: I'm not getting paid to tell you about this so you can be sure I really do recommend it.