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One of my favorite things is birthday cake, especially from a box and double especially covered in frosting. I'm not a fan of all the fancy buttercream frostings and fancy cakes. I like regular old moist and fluffy chocolate or vanilla birthday cake slathered in rich, sweet frosting. But knowing that your cake is filled with hydrogenated oils and trans fats really takes the fun out of it. Especially as a mom. How can we enjoy stuffing our faces with cake when we know how bad it is for us?

Thankfully, Nora Schultz, a New Jersey mom, has solved this problem with her Naturally Nora cake and frosting mixes, made from 100 percent natural ingredients. There are not even any artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. (The confetti cake is colored with things like spinach extract and turmeric!). They are also dairy and soy free. But most importantly, for me, Naturally Nora mixes contain no trans fats or hydrogenated oils.

Are New York kids different than other children? Some people think they're more mature, more precocious, maybe more sophisticated. Who can say how and if New York kids are really different, but there's no question that when you grow up in NY, New York City becomes a part of who you are.

That's why I think the work of Tom Matt is the perfect way to celebrate the birth of a new New York baby. Tom Matt does wonderful original pastel cityscapes: Whether it's the romantic sultry streetscapes of Lower Manhattan or the burgeoning industrial views, Tom Matt sees NYC just the way I like to imagine it.

But what makes his work perfect for a baby gift is not just what he draws, but what he draws it on.

We wrote about the book making possibilities from Blurb last year, but I had never tried it myself. Well, I just made my first digital photo book through Blurb.com and it came out great. I love giving photo albums, calendars and other custom and personalized gifts at Christmas and a Blurb book is perfect. In the past I have printed them out on high quality color printers and either had them bound at Kinkos or bound them myself, but having a professionally bound book is much easier and looks pretty slick.

Here's what I liked and thought could have been improved, plus what I learned along the way. At the end of the post find out details for our giveaway. Five winners will get to make their own blurb books, plus we've got blurb discount codes anyone can use right away.

The fabulous bloggers over at Cool Mom Picks have been working their magic on Halloween, finding the best goodies and coolest finds. Like these all natural plant based body and face face paints used to adorn this cutie pie above and perfect for a homemade Halloween costume.

Back when we were doing our Mother's Day Giveaway, we asked our readers what they wanted for Mother's Day and one post totally cracked us up. It was from Kate, who wanted a fake LeSport Sak bag and a Monkey Museum portrait. We are all too familiar with fake bags, but we had to go check out what the Monkey Museum was.

It turns out it's this really awesome art and we immediately wanted some too. So Kate, thanks for sharing this idea with us so now everyone can have the chance of getting a Monkey Museum piece for Father's Day with our Father's Day Giveaway!

Yesterday we posted about some of the basic baby necessities new mommies will be needing as they venture into the frontier of parenthood. Today we've got a great giveaway for some products you maybe didn't know you needed until you saw them.

Like, until you saw this image you might not have realized the gaping void in your life caused by not having a handmade baby hat with bunny ears.

Or the danger you are risking by not carrying these cute, comfy cotton BabySpareWear separates which come in their own little tote to tuck into your bag.

And what about after the little problem that made you need a change? Without a Wet Happened bag you would be forced to tote your pee-soaked togs in something as unfashionable as a plastic bag.

Getting ready for a baby is overwhelming, especially these days where ingenious moms have come up with products for every possible move your baby will make. I'll never forget the day that I forced my husband to take me to Buy Buy Baby where we spent hours walking around in a daze and eventually left in tears. I couldn't figure out what we actually needed and what was some marketing ploy and I was determined not to fill up our apartment with a lot of crappy looking stuff that would never be used.

After conducting extensive research (ie emailing all our friends with babies) we have come up with a list of essential things to have that first year. We've updated our store with great ideas for all your baby essentials perfect for your next shower, registry or if you just need to stock up yourself.

It's just one of those mundane chores that needs to be done, labeling every article of clothing, towel, backpack and object that will travel with your child to camp or to school in the hopes that when it inevitably gets lost it will find its way home to you. Nothing's going to make this job fun, but we've rounded up the whole range of different ways you can label your kid's clothing from the beautiful embroidered labels to fun, colorful ones, to ones you can make at home.

Here's the best ways to label your child's clothing for camp or school:

Last week we posted about Drop and Dine, a fabulous new way to enjoy dinner out at a restaurant together/alone with your toddler or child. Today we've got another great solution for eating out with kids??”Fun-a-Go-Go??”and we're giving away whole party pack of them.

Fun-a-Go-Go is a deceptively simple solution for entertaining children in a restaurant. It's just a small folio with a dry erase board and marker that clips on so it never gets lost. The kit has dozens of game and activity ideas printed on it to keep your little one entertained through even the longest restaurant meal. There's even more ideas posted on their website, or you can make up your own.

Recommended for children ages 3 and up, I think Fun-a-Go-Go is great. I love the simplicity of it, the way it allows you to interact with your children to get them set up in games that they can then continue on their own, allowing you to eat and talk.

Four years ago, when my little one was a baby, slings were not as popular as they are today. They were still a little on the "alternative" side, as in, the people that I work with would say, "Remember when you came in to the office with your baby in that sling?" the way one might say, "Remember the time you shaved your hair into a mohawk and stretched your earlobes until you could poke a hot dog through the hole?" Like it kind of scared them, I think.

But I loved my sling so much. I had one of the first simple tube slings, just a ring of fabric, actually fleece, that you just slipped on and put the baby in. You didn't have to adjust it or anything. That sling was so great and they were so hard to find, my friend and I actually contemplated starting a business making and selling them ourselves.

Why am I such a crazy sling devotee? Let me count the ways...