post holiday wrap up

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were full of good cheer. With a later than usual Thanksgiving, the holidays seemed even more hectic than usual. So, my picks for the standout gifts this year were the ones that brought everyone together: the Y'all Ball and the Color Me! Cookies Gift Tin from Eleni's.

I found the Y'all Ball on Gift Hero, one of my favorite gift sites for toys, and my nephews LOVED it! See what I had to say about the Y'all Ball here. And Eleni's Color Me! Gift Tin delivers ready-to-decorate cookies to your doorstep. See what I wrote about the Color Me! Gift Tin here. 

a cookie canvas for your inner artist

If you've ever made holiday cookies or a gingerbread house, you know that things can sometimes get a bit messy! One of my favorite discoveries this year was Eleni's Color Me! Gift Tins, because they bring you all of the fun of cookie decorating without the mess. Eleni's is a bakery and cookie company based in NYC. Their cute cookies come in a variety of designs and themes, and they are perfect for birthday parties, holidays, and other special occasions. (I feel a little late to the party when it comes to Eleni's; their cookies are wildly popular and have been featured on many t.v. shows and an endless number of magazine articles.)

Eleni's Color Me! Gift Tins come with handmade sugar cookies that are already iced and a pack of edible ink markers. So, each cookie is like a blank canvas ready for you to create your own work of art. I ordered Eleni's Color Me! Gingerbread Men Cookies for the holidays, and it was a great mini-activity for kids on Christmas Eve. What surprised me most was that the adults loved decorating the cookies too! Everyone enjoyed cookie decorating so much that we ran a few cookies short in the end. (On their website, Eleni's recommends ordering two or three cookies per person, and that's a great rule to follow. In an effort to avoid stifling the creativity of our resident artists, we also ordered extra markers.) This may become a holiday tradition!

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Here are a few more ways to celebrate the holidays with Eleni's cookies:

• Decorate the cookies on Christmas Eve and leave a few out for Santa.
• Use the cookies as personalized place settings at your holiday dinner. Guests can take them home as a party favor or enjoy them for dessert!
• For large holiday gatherings, an assortment of cookies and edible ink markers can make the inevitable "kids table" festive and fun.
• Have a cookie decorating contest!

supersize your fun

How great is this picture of my nephews? This gift was obviously a winner! The lightweight and shiny Y'all Ball looks like a giant soccer ball and is fantastic for spirited outdoor play. I found the Y'all Ball on Gift Hero, one of my favorite gift sites for toys, but you can also order it from the Y'all Ball website. The Y'all Ball rates high for its fun factor, and my nephews LOVED it! This is not the kind of gift that you wrap up with a bow; in fact, I recommend that you take the Y'all Ball out of the box and inflate it the night before you plan to give it. Then, you can have the big reveal outside and it's ready for playtime! Here are some helpful tips if you plan to give the Y'all Ball as a gift:

• The Y'all Ball comes in a range of sizes, so keep the age of the recipient in mind when selecting a size. We ordered the 32" Y'all Ball, and that was a great size for a group of kids ranging from two years old to twelve years old.
• You can use a hand pump or a compressor to inflate the Y'all Ball, but a compressor will be MUCH faster and is definitely the way to go.
• The Y'all Ball is NOT recommended for kids under three years old. That said, my two year old nephew was included in the Y'all Ball fun too. I was worried that he might get steamrolled by the ball in all of the excitement, but the Y'all Ball was very light and bouncy despite its size.
• If you plan to order the Y'all Ball, I highly recommend purchasing a replacement insert (these are sometimes available on the Y'all Ball website) or ordering more than one Y'all Ball. We ordered two, which turned out to be a very good thing, because after an unfortunate encounter with a rose bush, one popped. We were happy to have the backup!
• Make sure someone has a camera ready to capture all of the fun!