As you have no doubt seen, I do a lot of work with Walmart around the holidays every year. There are crafts, product reviews and even some shopping for gifts for my own family. But without a doubt, each year, the assignment I look forward to the most is the chance to buy and donate toys for kids in need. [...]

This Christmas, we're really trying to go easy on the gift front. For example, instead of a whole bunch of new toys, which my daughter absolutely, positively does not need, we are giving her accessories to go with with 18" doll she got for Christmas last year. The obvious option is a couple of doll outfits, but I wanted to [...]

Headphones have been a hot ticket item for the last few holiday seasons, and with a house full of music lovers, I've been paying close attention. Quality headphones always make an amazing gift, but I admit that some of the more popular ones — like Beats by Dre — are just out of reach, price-wise, for us, and I imagine [...]

I have been known to go overboard with my gift giving at Christmas time.What can I say? My favorite part of the day is not what I personally receive, but the looks on the faces of those people to whom I give gifts. Meaningful, useful gifts that they hopefully will love. But this year, with the baby on the way [...]

In my family, if there's one recipe that is synonymous with "the holidays", it's baked mac & cheese. It's not that I don't make it throughout the year. However, it's pretty much a given that I will make it for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and any holiday or special occasion in between. This is true even if this event is at a [...]

I am a little late with this update, since I'll technically be 31 weeks pregnant come Monday. But I've been trying to do these every 2 weeks, so here I am :) I've finally reached the big 3-0, and I'm really in awe of the fact that means I only have 10 weeks of pregnancy left. It feels like this [...]

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias Social Fabric community. I have been compensated to share my experience with you by Collective Bias and their client, Mastercard. Cancer is still not one of those things I like to talk about — not even nearly four years after my daughter's initial diagnosis and more than a year since she has [...]

Each year as the holidays approach, I have a lofty goal: To give as many eco-friendly gifts as possible. As the years have passed, I've gotten much better at this for two reasons: I make a lot of gifts by hand, and I know where to shop for the things I don't make. If there's one store I can count [...]

If I were to ask my daughter her idea of a fantasy, I'm sure it would involve a large room filled with brand new toys that she could play with all day long. Well, I don't know if I'll be able to help her with that any time soon, but Walmart recently made this dream come true for 1,000 kids [...]