Coming soon - More Non-Toy Gifts for Kids!

Back in April, I wrote a blog post of 12 Non-Toy Gift Ideas for Kids. It's my second most-visited post on this blog (and because I don't want the curiosity to kill you, the number one most-visited post is part one of my "Extremely Sophisticated Homemade Toys.") This month, it suddenly started getting a bunch more pageviews. So apparently people are really looking for great gifts that aren't toys. "Great" being the key word, of course. Because no one wants to be in the situation where you ask the mom of a niece, nephew or grandchild what you should get them for Christmas, and they say "Anything but toys! He has too many!" so you don't buy them any toys, and then when the child opens his gifts, everybody else ignored the "no toys" rule and bought awesome things like a talking robot with real laser action, and you're the weirdo aunt who bought them plain white gym socks. Awkward!

Anyway, my non-toy gifts post was getting a lot of action, so I figured that it was time for another one. And then I thought it would be even better if people could have a chance to win some free non-toy gifts for the kids in their lives. (Obviously!) So I searched around the internet for some great Christmas gifts that aren't toys, and then I asked the people who made and/or sold those gifts if they'd be willing to give people a chance to win one of those gifts for free. And... several of them said yes!

So starting in November, right here on this very blog, you're going to have a chance to win some great non-toy gifts for your kids! (Or somebody else's kids. I'm not picky.) And if you have an Etsy shop, or a website, or a product Facebook page (or, I don't know, a shed in your backyard that you use to sell stuff) that sells great non-toy gifts for kids, and you want to get in on the giveaway action and get some extra exposure for your business, send me an email at bejaneum(at)gmail(dot)com for more information! (Quick details: You'd send me two of your awesome non-toy gifts. One for Lucas to drool on test, and one to be used as a product giveaway. Your Etsy shop/website/Facebook page/shed would be featured in at least two blog posts. Want more details? Just ask.)

And for no particular reason (other than that I'm going through old pictures and that it's apparently National Baby Wearing Month, which I guess are both valid reasons, so you can just ignore the first part of this sentence, which I should've just deleted but didn't), here is a picture of my little family in Florida when Lucas was 11 months old:

You can vote for me here once a day through October 31:

And you can vote for me here once a day through forever:

But I think we can all agree that's kind of a lot of voting, so no pressure or anything!