Picplum: The Perfect Gift For The Holidays {A Giveaway}

 

I remember the day that I discovered picplum very clearly.  It was August 19th, and I was flying back to Louisiana for my 29th birthday after having spent 3 weeks in Southern California with my fiance’ and his son.  It was actually the last time I would ever fly “home” to Louisiana and I knew that it would be – because 11 days later my daughter and I would officially become residents of California.

I had spent nearly 30 years as a Louisiana resident.  My entire life.  My 4 year old’s entire life.  I was excited for a new adventure.  My family was excited for me too, for sure.  Even so, there were a lot of tears.  Like, a lot.  A ton.

I think it was mostly over the fact that my daughter was going with me.  Not that they don’t love me or anything, but if you are a parent, or a grandparent you understand the joy that a grandchild brings to a family.  You also understand that if said grandchild lived with you for a good year of her life and also came over for dinner at least once a week then that loss hurts even more.

But back to my story.  I was sitting in the Dallas airport, waiting on yet another delayed flight, when I saw a tweet from my fiance’ – suggesting that I check out picplum.  The idea behind it was that you can upload photos throughout the month – from your phone, your computer, and via email  - and on a certain day each month picplum will print and ship that “batch” of photos to addresses that you had previously specified.

I literally read the tweet, went to the picplum website, and pulled out my credit card to sign up.  I was totally sold – I could think of no better gift and surprise for my family back home.  The idea is simple, 50 cents per print, and starting at $2.50 shipping per recipient.  So for under 10 bucks a month, I can print and ship photos to my parents of my daughter, my soon-to-be-son, and occasionally myself and my fiance’.  They get everything from photos of the first day of school, to sleepy morning photos, to photos of us all at the pumpkin patch.

Here is what one of my upload pages looks like:

You can see in the top left hand corner that I sent 3 different recipients 19 photos each.  I love me some picplum.

As I sat in the airport uploading my photos, I found myself with a few questions.  I sent a tweet to @picplum and had a response almost immediately.  At other times I’ve been on the site and the live chat has popped out and one of the founders has said “Hey Erika – let me know if you have any questions!”.  The customer service is amazing – and the team really cares about building a great product with a clean customer experience.  I love to feel special – and the folks at picplum have a way of doing that for me without even trying.

My family loves getting the photos each month – they really look forward to it and I always get elated text messages and phone calls when a new batch arrives.  My fiance’ has signed up with his own account and sends photos to family back in Connecticut, Maine, and Florida – and just this month he wised up and added me to his account!  I got my first batch in the mail a few weeks ago and I was so impressed!  Check it out!

They come in a pretty purple envelope (excuse the iPhone photo – but awesome packaging ftw!):

And the photos are just gorgeous!

Can you tell I just think picplum is the coolest thing since sliced bread?  Cause I do.  I have nothing to gain from shouting from the rooftops that I love this company – I just think they’re awesome!  I am a happy paying customer, and I know that will continue for the foreseeable future!

Because the guys over at picplum know that I’m a happy customer, they offered to giveaway some photo credits here on Chic Shopper Chick – which I thought was a super idea!  So, if you want to try out picplum for yourself, enter to win $50 in credit – which should get you several batches of photos printed and shipped!

Don’t want to wait to get started?  You can sign up for your picplum account now (and the first 5 people who sign up for picplum through Chic Shopper Chick and print and ship a batch of photos will get $10 in credit towards their next order) and if you win the giveaway, then they will just apply the credit to your account!

One last thing.  I want to do a little reverse disclosure here.  I am not benefiting through this write up whatsoever.  I am not getting any free product, and I am not being paid by picplum.  The link that you click above is not an affiliate link – it’s simply a tracking link so that we can keep track of the first 5 orders (and know who to credit the $10 to).  The guys at picplum simply offered this to do this though my site because I am a crazy fan and have been vocal about my support of the company from day one.

Ok, so now the good stuff.  To enter:

• Go over and click like on the picplum Facebook page. Leave a comment letting me know that you did so.

Holiday Gift Guide: Littlest Pet Shop Magic Motion Treehouse

Audrey Grace loves Littlest Pet Shop, so we were so excited that Hasboro sent us the Littlest Pet Shop Magic Motion Treehouse Playset for review this Christmas.  If you’re looking for a gift for the little girl in your life (I’d say ages 4-8) this is it!  It’s the perfect price point (under $40 on Amazon) and will definitely provide hours and hours of creative play!

Holiday Gift Guide: Glowberry Bears {A Giveaway}

A few years ago when we visited Walt Disney World Audrey came home with one of those Minnie Mouse figures that when the button is pressed, her skirt spins around and she lights up.  At the time I thought it was a novelty, but it has turned into a “thing” – being that she can’t sleep without some light that she can control, in the bed with her.  As you can imagine, this means that each night I’m tiptoeing back into her room to remove glowsticks (we buy them in packs of 20), lanterns, and other lit objects that are hard and not meant to be in bed with her.

Then the folks at The Brainy Company contacted me about their Glowberry Bears and I just knew that Audrey Grace would love it.  They sent us the light blue Glowberry bear, and I’ve discovered that it works in 3 settings:

• Bear to Bear – There’s a chip located in the bear’s foot and when placed in close proximity of another Glowberry Bear, they communicate with each other.  We only have one bear so I cannot attest to the quality of this feature, but it sounds pretty cool!
• Nighttime – This setting transitions our bear into a night light – pressing the bear’s tummy makes it light softly from within and the glow will last for 3 minutes.
• Bear to Child – The bear talks to us, and even has a name! If you press its hand it will say things like, “Hi, I’m Twinkleton. What’s your name?” Pressing its other hand makes the nightlight light up, and tickling its tummy makes it giggle.

Holiday Cards at Tiny Prints

Even though I have all year to prepare, the time to order our Holiday Cards always sneaks up on me.   I don’t know how it happens, but right around December 5th I start panicking when I realize my time is limited to order, address, and send my cards in time.

I’m here to tell you that your time is limited, too.  It’s time for us to order our cards!  Let’s get a move on!

For four years now, Tiny Prints has been my one and my ONLY destination for ordering the most amazing Holiday cards.  If you don’t believe me – check out the great Christmas Cards that I sent out last year.

This year has seen a lot of changes for Audrey Grace and me.  I got engaged, and we moved across the country to create a family with my amazing fiance’ and his adorable son.  The kiddos are only a year apart in age, attend the same school, and just generally adore each other.  This year we had professional photos taken of the two of them, and fully intend to not only hang those in our home, but also to use them on our Christmas Cards.  I couldn’t wait to design my cards!  I literally stalked our photographer for our proofs and our CD (sorry, Cindy!).

Last night I sat down to order our cards, and all I can say is wow.  Tiny Prints has always had amazing holiday card designs, but this year I was positively overwhelmed.  There are so many options (over 1,000!) of cards to choose from, and that’s not even including the envelopes, color options, and so forth.  This morning I was tinkering around with the cards – here is one of the possible designs that I came up with  –

The front!

The back!

I loved this card (called Merry Medley) because it had several places for us to put photos of the kids on the front, and we were able to add up to 3 photos with captions on the back, though I chose to add one with a quick update of our lives this year.  SO cute, right?

Or how about this card?  This one is called Merry Grid!

Tiny Prints also has a cool feature where if you have additional photos to share that didn’t quite make it on your cards – they will create a custom website called Tiny Prints Snapshot for you to share more of them!  They print the URL right on your card, which I thought was super awesome!  Then your family can type in the custom URL and get their holiday fill of your adorable selves!

Where do you get your holiday cards?  Oh and help us decide, please – leave a comment with which card is your favorite?

Happy Holidays!

Calling All Procrastinators – A Guide To Last Minute Gifts

 

Maybe it was a crazy month at work, or maybe you have a new baby at home and you have exactly zero time to go out and shop.  Maybe you are on bed-rest, or just hate to shop.  Maybe you just wish life had an easy button.

Well, there is no easy button – but there is an easy, quick way to buy gifts for friends and family this holiday season – one that you can even buy ON CHRISTMAS MORNING.

You totally read that right.  But wait – you’re thinking that no stores are open on Christmas morning – so how can this be?

Check out clickit!togiftit! – a place to buy digital gift cards for family and friends!  clickit!togiftit! procrastinators like myself the chance to send digital gift cards (which can be redeemed at almost 50 vendors, including restaurants, retail stores, entertainment, and even online stores!)  The best part are the fees:  there are none!  No cost to ship your cards, and no fee to purchase.  Sweet!

I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking that sending a gift card somehow seems impersonal.  Well, with clickit!togiftit! you can personalize your gift by selecting the egift card design of your choice or, my favorite, by uploading your own photos or images, which is then delivered directly to your gift recipient’s inbox!  I did this last year with a gift card for my dad, and I used a photo of us all at the beach the previous summer and he loved it!

Even better, right now Clickit!togiftit! offers a special gift with purchase.  So, spend $25 on a voucher to Uno’s and receive $5 to use yourself.  You can also receive $10 to spend at The Children’s Place for every $40 you send.  My personal favorite is when you buy $100 to Magianno’s you’ll get a $20 gift card and a free subscription to Food and Wine magazine.

The deals change every week, so be sure to check it out!

Disclosure:  I was provided with a gift card as compensation for this post.  Opinions are my own.  

Jake and the Neverland Pirates – Holiday Episode Airs TOMORROW!

We love Disney in this house, not that you ever doubted that considering that we are all season passholders!

It’s funny though, because when My Friends Tigger and Pooh went off the air, my daughter was crushed.  CRUSHED.  She has loved Tigger since she was 6 months old, so to lose her pals on Disney Junior – well it didn’t go over well.  To top it off, I thought most of the shows were more geared towards boys – like Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Special Agent Oso.  I didn’t think she’d like either show.

And then one day an episode of Jake and the Neverland Pirates was on in the background and she was mesmerized.  Yo-ho-mateys-away!  ”Mommy – can we watch another episode of Jake?!” she begged.

I guess my boy-themed-theory was wrong!

Since that day, Jake and the Neverland Pirates has been the number 1 most requested cartoon in our house.  So, thanks to Team Mom, the kiddos were SO excited to receive a gift pack with some of their favorite Jake loot – including a special sneak peek of the Holiday Episode!  You can get your own sneak peek in the clip below!

Adorable right?  Gnarly snow drift!

The cool thing is that this episode airs tomorrow night, December 2 at 8:30 ET on Disney Junior.  The episode is called “It’s a Winter Never Land/Hook on Ice”, and in it Jake, Izzy and Cubby awake to find that Peter Pan has left the crew some presents and a tree to celebrate Winter Treasure Day, and Captain Hook invites Jake and the crew on a winter treasure hunt.

Be sure to tune in tonight and catch the all-new episode on Disney Junior on the Disney Channel!

Disclosure:  I was provided with a Jake and the Neverland Pirates Gift Pack by Team Mom to facilitate this review.  Opinions are my own, duh.