Reviews Archives - Page 20 of 24

Laundry room re-do with Blinds.com

When we moved into our house almost 7 years ago, I was so excited to finally have a laundry room. It seemed like a pretty nice upgrade from our “laundry closet” of our rental house and an awesome improvement over our “laundry kitchen” at our past house.

But, then I didn’t quite know what to do with the room once I had it. It was an awkward, L-shaped space that came complete with an ugly Utilitub, a useless wire shelf, and no good place to put the washer and dryer. Thank goodness I found Blinds.com, because it gave me the inspiration I needed to finish the space and create a separate and functional room that is truly fun to enter.

Our Groovy Girls Sweet 16 Tea Party

We all want our daughters to grow up in a world where they are only limited by their own imaginations. Even in our fast-paced lifestyles, such a place still exists and it’s within the world of Groovy Girls. These colorful soft dolls are full of personality and spunk with a message to girls to be true to themselves.

This year the iconic Groovy Girls from Manhattan Toy Company are turning 16 and they are as big of a hit now as they were when they first arrived in toy stores all those years ago. In fact, Groovy Girls just won the prestigious Parents' Choice Award this year!

Looking for fun on your trampoline? Look no further! This is the ultimate list of insanely fun activities and ideas you can do on your trampoline for kids and adult. From workouts and collaborative games to learning activities and creative play – there’s something for everyone!

Build a fort as big as your imagination with Fort Magic

You may remember how much I adore Fort Magic fort building kits that make it easy to create amazing forts for the kiddos without an engineering degree, but now that the kids are older, I love it even more. Since our last post we’ve made huge forts in our living room, our family room, and even took the Fort Magic kit with us while on vacation so the kids could build an outdoor hideout for cousins only, complete with added satellite dish.

Haven’t heard of Fort Magic before? The Fort Magic fort building kit contains everything you need to create your own fort as big as your imagination. The 382 piece kit contains all different shapes and sizes of rods, connectors and accessories that allow you to build a fort – anywhere, anytime.

Acrylic photo gifts make your photos pop

When we moved into our house 7 years ago, I went out and spent a fortune professionally printing pictures and then getting them framed and matted. Then we planned out large photo designs and hung them gallery-style across our wall. And we haven’t done much else since.

But, recently my walls got quite the shakeup when I was given the opportunity to create an acrylic mounted print that doesn’t require a frame. A relatively new medium for displaying photographs, acrylic photo gifts are turning photo displays on their heads.

Unlike what might first come to mind, photos on acrylic aren’t just a standard printed photo laminated or incased in acrylic sheets. Rather, the photo is printed directly onto large acrylic sheets {think plexiglass} via a flatbed printer. I would describe the end result as like hi-def television, but in a photo.

Karmin G3 Salon Pro hair dryer makes styling quick and easy

While some people complain about how their hair takes forever to dry, I’ve always held the record for the fastest hair drying, ever. We’re talking less than a minute and my hair goes from dripping wet to perfectly dry and I’m ready to style. Of course, this is awesome on the days that I don’t have time to spend drying my hair but don’t want my hair dripping for the walk to school with my daughter, but I never really thought about what all this super high heat did to my hair until I tried to grow it out.

My hair is now longer than my shoulders for the first time since elementary school, and now I’m seeing all the effects of years of high heat – damaged, frizzy hair, split ends, and flyaways galore – that make me want to drip dry my hair every single day. Or at least I did until I got my hands on this:

The Karmin Professional G3 Salon Pro Hair Dryer makes me ridiculously happy. And, not because it cut down the time to dry my hair… but because it now takes longer.

Say what?

Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season tires make any road trip epic

While we have a lot of fun trying out new cars whenever the opportunity arises, the truth of the matter is that we really love our car. It may not have all the fancy features available on newer models, but my wife and I both agree that our car still just feels right, for both of us.

Having an older car that we both love is great in so many ways, but most important is that its paid for. Of course, the other side of that coin is that we are long out of warranty, so maintaining the car is fully our responsibility.

We recently had to replace the tires for the second time since we've owned it, and boy was it an eye opening experience. The first time we chose some tires that were a little sportier than stock and we loved the results, so this time around I asked our neighborhood tire guys for something similar, but they really missed the mark.

The tires we left with were a much softer tire that allowed waaaay more roll and weight shifting side to side. Thinking maybe we could enjoy a softer ride we tried them for a while, but couldn’t believe how much tires affected that perfect "feel" that our car had before.

Lucky for us, Goodyear came to our rescue in the form of their new Eagle Sport All-Season tires. I couldn't wait for them to arrive so we could upgrade to high-performance, sporty tires just in time for an epic road trip down to Portland.

The gift of freedom with the FiLIP Smart Locator Watch

Growing up, we would disappear for hours, playing in the neighborhood, our friend’s houses, and off in the woods until dinnertime. Even at my children’s ages, I had a freedom that my kids don’t know these days in our urban neighborhood where the dinner bell doesn’t send the kids running.

Maybe this is why so many young kids have cell phones now, starting as young as elementary school. I get it, it’s for convenience for the parents first and foremost, but kids having cellphones is just not for me… at least not for a few more years. I’m not ready to police text messages, restrict game usage, make sure the kids don’t have open access to the internet, or worry about them losing expensive electronics by allowing them to have their own cellphones.

But this year, I’m giving them the gift of freedom in a way that is age appropriate with the new FiLIP from AT&T.

It may look like a fancy child’s watch, but don’t let that deceive you. Once you know what the Filip does, you will understand why I’m so excited about it and why we feel it is a great buy for anyone with a child aged 5 to 11.

Girl of The Year 2014 Isabelle arrives at the Seattle American Girl store

Like a small child counting down the days until Christmas, we were counting down the days until January 1st. Not because we’re huge into New Years’ celebrations, but because American Girl announced their Girl of the Year {GOTY}.

We look for any reason to party around here, especially when the party is for a doll as elegant as this one:

Meet Isabelle, the Girl of the Year for 2014. Isabelle Palmer loves ballet and everything fashion. Her story involves a new school, struggling to stand out in the shadow of her older sister, and figuring out how she can use her unique talents to shine. Since my daughter would like nothing more than to be a dancer, Isabelle's story really struck her and she's now smitten with this beautiful GOTY doll.

Wireless sound with TRACKS AIR headphones from SOL REPUBLIC

By Tyler, editor and reviewer

Who doesn’t like a good, quality surround sound that makes music and movies come alive? Someone whose movie room shares a wall with a baby’s room, that’s who.

This is the problem with our entertainment room, designed for movies and thumping sound, but that just so happens to be located right next to our son’s bedroom. These days, the only thing playing at Rave Central theater is children’s movie matinees in between nap and bedtime. It’s a sad fate for a room with such promise.

So, what’s a movie loving guy like myself to do? Make a plan to revive our indie movie house with the arrival of these new TRACKS AIR headphones from SOL REPUBLIC.