Christmas time is my favorite time of year.  It is also a super hectic time of year with parties to attend, gifts to buy and houses to decorate.  It definitely has me daydreaming about taking a vacation to relax after all the hectic activities.

Gogobot makes it easy to plan the perfect vacation virtually!  

Never heard of it?  It is a social travel site that started in 2010.  It also has the prestige of being named one of Time’s top sites of 2011 and winner of the 2010 Crunchie award for Best Design.

I’ll be traveling to Chicago next year for a mini-vacation/blog conference.  I figured now is a great time to start checking out places to eat and things to do while visiting the city.  I started by visiting the Gogobot Chicago Travel Guide page.

Of course, the first thing I looked for was a place a to stay.  The top rated hotel, out of the 193 hotels listed on the Chicago hotel guide was the InterContinental Chicago.  One of the really neat things about GogoBot is that readers share real photos of places around the city along with their reviews.  This view of the city sold me on the hotel I was looking at.

With a place to sleep selected, I clicked over to search for some delicious food on the restaurants page.

This amazing dish, from the Purple Pig page, made it top on my list of places to visit.
Of course, a trip to Chicago isn’t complete without a deep dish pizza!

I started making a list of must see places and things to do but it just kept growing. So, I bookmarked the Things to Do page on GogoBot.

So, are you ready for a vacation? Tell me where you’d go if you could pick anywhere.

Gogobot allows you to tap into the knowledge of your friends when planning a trip anywhere. You can find like-minded travelers and inspiration for your next vacation, creating easy-to-use wishlists you can return to again and again. 
And when you are not in vacation mode or planning a trip, you can discover hidden gems in your own neighborhood for entertaining guests or a weekend staycation. 
The best part? Every page on Gogobot is personalized. You can see reviews from your friends and people you are following at the top, which allows you to weed out the noise and fraudulent reviews that become a problem on other review sites. Check out Gogobot today! 

 This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Gogobot. The opinions and text are all mine.

Five years old is a tough age sometimes.  My daughter definitely thinks she knows it all and can be difficult when trying to explain the importance of doing something she isn’t really interested in doing.  This happens a lot with things like brushing teeth.

At our first dentist appointment for her, the hygienist explained that brushing and flossing were super important to maintain her “princess teeth.”  Since that visit, we have definitely played to her love of princesses when attempting to get her to brush her teeth. We also try to include dental hygiene items in a lot of her gifts to make it fun for her to brush.  With Christmas coming, I have been looking for something for her stocking and I am so excited about a recent gift I got for her!

I was out shopping and noticed that Colgate had some adorable Holiday packs that included a toothbrush and toothpaste together with characters that my kids love!

My daughter adores Dora so I grabbed one to add to her stocking.  I am hoping that, by making the toothbrush and toothpaste more fun with Dora on them, she will want to brush more.  I love being able to give practical items that have a little twist as gifts because they are both useful and fun for my kids.

You can see more of my shopping trip in my Google+ album.
Once home with my purchases, I started working on putting the items into the stocking.

Along with my Colgate Holiday Pack with the Dora toothbrush and toothpaste, I had also bought some fun glittery lip balm and a little Dora jewelry holder for her. 

I finished the stocking items by adding tags to each with words from her favorite song that I changed up a bit to fit into my attempt to get her to brush more.  The song is all about what you do to be a princess so I added a few words about teeth brushing to my tag.

The stocking is all filled and ready for her on Christmas.  I hope the new toothbrush and toothpaste from the Holiday Pack will get her super excited about brushing so she can show off her #holidaysmiles. 

Do you fill your child’s stocking with practical items that have a fun twist like the Colgate Holiday Pack I picked up for my daughter?

I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Colgate. #CBias #HolidaySmiles #SocialFabric”

I hope you are all enjoying your Thanksgiving!  In preparation for your holiday shopping, I thought I would share some of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals being offered by my sponsors!

Lighting Buff

My kids are adorable. I’m not saying that to brag because of course I think they are adorable. I’m their mom after all. In fact, as their mom, I think they are so adorable that that I take about a billion pictures of them {up from only a million before I was a blogger!}…Pictures of important events right down to silly things like my son sitting on a table playing with tape.

Unlike when I was growing up and my parents were drowning in physical pictures of me, all of the pictures of my kids get stored on a handy dandy little hard drive. Besides seeing them rotating on the digital photo frame, they don’t get much attention.

To sort through some of that picture madness, each year I create a book filled with some of the pictures taken during that year. There is typically one book for each child. It is a great way to summarize the year in pictures.

I recently created a book for my daughter H to highlight her recent start in Kindergarten. I used Blurb this time around because they offered a ton of options for me when creating my book. Once my book was done, in addition to having the physical copy, I could also share it with my friends and family on Facebook, Twitter or even here at Just Us Four.

The software is super easy to use! I chose one of the templates from their Bookify Online program. It allowed me to easily use my pictures from Facebook and Instagram to create my book while still maintaining a professional look and layout.

I only added text to one or two of to my pages because most of the photos speak for themselves. 

I love how it turned out. Right now, it is living on top of our living room ottoman. I find H in there thumbing through the pages at least every other day.

With grandparents coming to visit soon for the holidays, I’m sure it will get lots of attention too. Guess I should probably hurry up and finish E’s book too so they can check them both out.

Now that you’ve seen my awesomesauce book, I know you are ready to click over to Blurb and create your own! Definitely go check them out BUT be sure to enter to win a $50 gift card to Blurb to create your own masterpiece RIGHT HERE!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blurb is a creative publishing platform that allows anyone to create, share and sell a professional quality book. Make a portfolio of your client work, an archive of your blog, a cook book of your favorite recipes, a photo book of your family pictures or a quick book of your instagram photos – the possibilities are limitless. It’s easy and quick to do – with a variety of software options you could complete your dream book in next to no time.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Blurb. The opinions and text are all mine.

We all know that the big C is just a few short weeks away! Before that though, comes an awesome holiday that brings families together to celebrate what they are thankful for.

Unlike Christmas where the gatherings typically are around a beautiful tree, Thanksgiving’s setting is around the dinner table. And, of course, no dinner table is complete with a beautiful place setting.


Starting with table linens is an easy way to get a lot of impact without having to load the table with all kinds of decorations. In searching for some new table linens for Thanksgiving, I came across Banarsi Designs.

Banarsi Designs is the child of one couple {Pavel and Yuli} and a business trip to Dubai. Their shop features gorgeous table décor, luxury bedding and more.

Take a look at some of these stunning options for setting the Thanksgiving table! 

{Exotic Oriental Table Runner}

{Hawthorn Leaf Table Runner}

{Arabian Velvet Table Runner}

Have guests coming for Thanksgiving? Welcome them to your guest room with a gorgeous bedding set

{Hand Painted Bedding Set}

So, what is your favorite way to decorate the Thanksgiving table? Do you look for new linens each year or go with a traditional set from year to year?

I was compensated to write this post.  However, as always, the views, opinions and thoughts expressed here are 100% my own.