This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of FriendGiftr. All opinions are 100% mine.

I love giving gifts, I love seeing the look of happiness on someone’s face or hearing there excitement on the phone as they thank you for that gift. Sometimes though it’s hard to find something for someone, especially if you don’t know them at all, like a business associate or co-worker whom you don’t talk to often.

Now though you have a great option for sending that gift, FriendGiftr is a site where you can send virtual or physical gift cards to anyone you would like to. You can even choose the amount to send along with giving the person the ability to turn in the gift card for a card at another store or use it across many different stores all without having to tell you they have done it. I like the idea because I hate offending people and now you don’t have to worry about it. The other cool thing about this site is that you can use it from Facebook, your iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android.

Check out the site, what gift card would you get or what would you want to receive? Me? I think I would want a card from Kohls or from Red Lobster as I love Red Lobster, yes I know I have expensive taste, but I don’t get there much to it’s okay right?

If you still need just one more gift you have a very simple solution, you can go to the local gas station or you send an e-gift certificate. There are many sites that offer these from amazon.com to Fashion Bug and other online retailers.

Do a search find a store you like and you can either print the certificate or send it to their email. It’s simple easy and a great way to give a good last minute gift.

I received this book to review, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I love taking photos and as a teen I wanted to be a photographer, unfortunately there was nothing at my small school to encourage this so eventually I gave up with the idea and found interior design. Now I consider photography a hobby, but I still have a lot I need to learn and that is where the book The Basic Book of Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Enhance, and Share Your Digital Pictures is very helpful.

The book helps to explain things like lenses and camera settings, you know the ones that you never use. It’s very easy to read and actually has some great tips for pro’s and beginners alike. I had a friend of mine who is a photographer take a look at this book and even he learned a few things.

I think the best part about this book is the guide to helping you pick out a digital camera, not only is it very helpful, but it’s easy to understand and you don’t feel like an idiot once you get to the store.

If you have a cell phone with a camera this book will help you too. Yes they tell you how to improve your cell phone photos! How cool is that. I really learned a few tricks here as I never really used my cell phone camera much, now I do.

A few days ago I received this in my email and thought it would fit great with my review. I hope you enjoy it and that it will help you with your holiday photos.

Ten Tips for Making Great Photo Greeting Cards for the Holidays

By Tom Grimm and Michele Grimm,
Authors of The Basic Book of Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Enhance, and Share Your Digital Pictures

If you want your family’s photo greeting card to impress your friends this holiday season, here are 10 helpful suggestions from professional photographers Michele and Tom Grimm, authors of a brand new handbook, The Basic Book of Digital Photography.

1. Plan Ahead. Eye-catching photos take some thought, so envision the card you want to send before you take any pictures. Pick a setting with an uncluttered background. Decide what type of clothes to wear (causal or dress-up?) and what colors might be appropriate (red and green will enhance a Christmas theme). If you want to shoot outdoors, consider the weather and the time of day for the best light. Cloudy or overcast days are perfect for portraits without shadows; avoid bright sunlight that causes people to squint.

2. Get Your Camera Ready. Be sure to install new or freshly-charged batteries so the camera won’t stop working in the middle of your shooting session. Also check that there is room on the memory card to hold plenty of new exposures. And remember to carefully clean the camera lens of dust and fingerprints; use a microfiber lens cloth. For pictures of the best technical quality, adjust the camera’s “image quality” and “image resolution” to their highest settings. Finally, make certain the “date/time” setting is turned off so those numbers won’t appear on the front of your family and ruin every picture.

3. Move in Close. Remember that friends mostly enjoy seeing the faces of your family and pets. Get close to them by moving the camera physically closer or adjusting the zoom lens to fill the viewfinder or LCD monitor with their faces. Aim the camera’s autofocus target on the eyes; be careful it isn’t pointed between the heads of people because the background will be in focus instead of the family’s faces. Also, make sure there are no windows or mirrors in the background that are distracting or cause reflections, especially if you are shooting with flash.

4. Forget About Red-eye. If the sun is causing shadows on the faces of your family, or you are shooting indoors in dim light, we recommend using the camera’s built-in flash or an external flash unit to provide “fill” light that illuminates your subjects more evenly. Avoid the “red-eye reduction” flash setting, if your camera offers it, because this makes a series of pre-flashes or a steady light that causes some people to blink or shut their eyes. “Red-eye,” an annoying bright red spot occasionally seen in the pupils of the eyes, is easily eliminated later with your computer’s image-editing software.

5. Use a Tripod, and a Friend. Put your camera on a tripod so it will remain in the same position after you compose the family picture. Recruit a friend to trip the shutter release instead of using a remote control or the self-timer to fire the camera yourself. Remind everyone to keep looking toward the camera and not glance away to see if the baby or dog is behaving; depend on your friend to snap the shutter when everybody looks their best.

6. Keep On Shooting. Someone in the family group is certain to blink, yawn, scratch or look away just as a picture is taken, so shoot again and again. One of the joys of digital photography is that it costs nothing extra to make a dozen or so exposures rather than just one or two. A warning: Your subjects will quickly get restless, so don’t spend time between shots checking images on the camera’s LCD monitor to see how they turned out. Pick the best image later when you view all the shots at full size on your computer.

7. Create a Collage When Family Members are Absent. Can’t get everyone in your family together for a holiday card photo? A solution is to get and assemble individual photos of each family member into a collage or montage that becomes a single image. Many image-editing software programs — probably including the one that came with your camera — have a feature for easily merging photos. First choose a template from various designs that hold different numbers and sizes of images, then arrange your family’s photos as you like.

8. Dress Up Your Holiday Photos with Borders and Type. Your computer’s image-editing software also enables you to add borders and to type captions that become part of the family’s holiday photo. Pick a border with a design and colors appropriate for the season. You can select different typefaces, sizes and colors, and position the text wherever you wish in the picture. Also, local and online photo centers offer holiday-themed templates for greeting cards that are easy to fill in with your own photos and text.

9. Print Your Own Holiday Photo Cards. Remember to design your photo card so it can be printed on standard sizes of photo paper and will fit in standard-size envelopes. To save money, select a “Picture Package” in your image-editing software to make several prints on one piece of photo paper — such as two 5 x 7-inch or four 4 x 5-inch prints on a single 8-½ x 11-inch sheet — and cut them apart. Also consider HP Holiday Photo Card packs with 20 sheets of 5 x 7-inch glossy photo paper and matching envelopes for $9.99.

10. An Easier Option: Order Your Cards at a Photo Center. If your mailing list is large, it usually is more convenient and economical to have your holiday photo cards printed at a local or online photo center. Many allow you to upload the photo image file online to a selection of card templates that you can personalize with family names and greetings. The cards and envelopes can be picked up a few hours later, or will be mailed to you. Search online for “photo greeting cards” to find a wide choice of photo-finishing companies, including shutterfly.com, snapfish.com, and photoworks.com.

©2009 Tom Grimm and Michele Grimm, authors of The Basic Book of Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Enhance, and Share Your Digital Pictures
Author Bios
Tom Grimm and Michele Grimm, authors of The Basic Book of Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Enhance, and Share Your Digital Pictures, are a husband-and-wife photojournalism team who have spent nearly four decades traveling the globe; the couple has visited every continent and more than 130 countries in search of the perfect photographic image. Their photographs and articles have been published worldwide in magazines and newspapers and on the Internet. The Grimms are authors and illustrators of thirteen adult and children’s books.

I was given this book to review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I love to read and when Dan Browns new book the Lost Symbol came out I just had to pick it up and check it out. I love reading books like these because they are fun and full of historical facts, myths and make you think a little. Now some of this book of course is fiction but how do you know what is and what is not, well that is where the guide Decoding the Lost Symbol by Simon Cox comes into play.

This guide explains a lot of the Lost Symbol and really gives you more of a background on whats in the book. It explains things like, the hand of mysteries and the the institute of noetic science. Something I never knew existed until I started reading this book, now I read the book before I got the guide so I decided to take both of them and check out what I wanted to know and I found out that noetic science is a real science. It really sounds kind of cool and if it hadn’t been for this guide I would never have known it was real.

The guide is set up in an A-Z format so it’s pretty easy to use. I would recommend of course re-reading the book and having the guide with you as you read. If you haven’t read the book yet I would read it once before looking at the guide that way your not trying to take in the story and figure the guide out all at once.

Overall I really like having the guide and I’m actually loaning it to a friend to take a look at before I donate it to our library, something I do with most of the books I get to review, just so I can share them with everyone else.

Back cover excerpt

Dan Brown’s new novel once again features Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, this time in the United States, racing to uncover clues and crack codes involving secrets that are perpetuated to this day. But how much of the novel is true and what is pure fiction? Simon Cox, bestselling author of Cracking the Da Vinci Code and Illuminating Angels & Demons, offers the first definitive guide to all the mysteries featured in The Lost Symbol.

Based on extensive research, this A-to-Z guide lists the real people, organizations, and themes featured in Dan Brown’s latest novel, explains their histories and their meanings, reproduces and analyzes the symbols themselves, and provides insider knowledge gleaned from years of exhaustive study. From the monuments of Washington, D.C., to the secrets of Salt Lake City and the hidden enclaves in Langley, Virginia, Cox knows where the facts are hidden about the Freemasons, Albert Pike, the Rosicrucians, the Founding Fathers, and more.

This is the only resource you’ll need to understand and enjoy the complex new world of The Lost Symbol.

If you know someone who likes to bake then you should love this review. I recived 4 christmas cookie cutters from CheapCookieCutters.com to review. Now I know your thinking what is the difference between cookie cutters and why would you want to review them, well there is a difference these cookie cutters are metal, something I prefer and they have a cut side and a non-cut side. now this is helpful when it comes to makeing your cookies all look the same or you could be like me and pay no attention and just cut on whatever side you like. At least we know both sides of these cookie cutters work to make your cookies.

Another good thing about these cutters is that they are strong, they are not flimzy cutters like others I have used and I found it very easy to cut and move the cookies. This is really a must have gift for anyone who loves to bake or you can just buy them and use them for your holiday baking.

My friend and I were out shopping last weekend and this is what she really wanted to get her son. Not only did she want to get the Spike Ultra Dinosaur, but their were many other children wanting their parents to get is as well. This thing is huge and I’m sure any child boy or girl would love playing with this. It’s just that cool.

It has flashing lights, blinking eyes, and makes grunting dino speak noises. The kids in the store’s eyes were like huge saucers and they just sat and stared at it for a few minutes before bugging their parents to buy it for them. This is really a hot top gift for Christmas.

This is a sponsored post, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I have talked about jewelry before, but this is a little different and may appeal to people who are not looking for classic jewelry. This is still very beautiful and stylish but in a different and unique way bling bling jewelry can be a great gift for someone who likes bigger more flair then some of the other jewelry on this guide.

Hip hop jewelry is great for more outspoken people who love haven’t others see and notice them. Hip hop jewelry is not understated at all and can really add to a wardrobe and of course is a must for anyone going into the entertainment business. If you know someone like that look into hip hop jewelry as a great gift for Christmas.

This is a paid review, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Diamonds may be a girls best friend, but pearls are her saving grace. When you wear pearls you always seem to look more sophisticated and elegant, but in a understated way.  Finding pearls that not only look good but are unique is sometimes a hard task, but Pure Pearls makes that task very easy.

The site has many different types of pearls like southsea pearls, Tahitian Pearls and freshwater pearls. All of them look amazing and if you are a diamond girl they have many pearls that are set in diamonds.  Pearls make a great gift for a mother, wife, teen or young girl. Really any women could wear pearls just because of their timeless look.

Now you don’t have to go crazy and get a huge strand of pearls, pendents like the one I have shown are a great way to introduce a women to pearls. You could also get earrings, bracelets or even a ring. I have a pearl ring and I love it. It dresses me up when I want to be dressy, but does not draw too much attention to me, perfect when you want to look good, but blend in at the same time.

Take a look at the Pure Pearls website, what pearl jewelry do you like?

There is now only 2 weeks left till Christmas. It’s scary for some, not so bad for others. Where do you fall? Are you going to be one of those that end up buying something from the local connivance store on Christmas Eve? I hope if your reading this blog your not as I have had so many great gift ideas for you. Go back, check them out and see if there is something that will help you.

Okay now that you have looked, you did didn’t you? I have some other ideas for you. These are gifts that you can get now, quickly and with little work.

A gift card, make sure to check what the terms are before you buy.

A lottery ticket, I always give these out at the holidays it’s just fun and sometimes people can actually win a good amount. Last year one person got $50.

A photo book with pictures they will love, yes this can take some work but it’s worth it.

A flower or fruit arrangement, all you have to do is pick up the phone or go online and order it. Easy!

Stamps, yes stamps. I have actually given this to someone and they loved it. I bought 3 books of stamps and a lottery ticket and stuck it in a card. The reason was simple this person was always complaining about having to go the the post office and buy stamps. I solved that problem, well at least for a few months.

A subscription to Netflix, Blockbuster or Gamefly. These gifts work great for anyone who can’t drive somewhere, but has internet access.

Do you have any easy last minute gift ideas?

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Dr Dermal. All opinions are 100% mine.

Do you have a teen that has an acne problem? It’s a horrible thing to them and I’m sure they would agree with me when I say that buying them some really good acne treatments would make a great gift. The best part about this gift is that you can get some of the best acne products at 50% off and free shipping is you live in the US or UK.

How? Well all you have to do is check out Dr. Dermal’s innovative acne range of products and find one that will work for your giftee. Their products are endorsed by dermatologists and are derived from natural ingredients. Their acne cream combats the 4 causes of acne making it more likely that you will find results with this product. There are 3 steps you will have to follow to use the products, the first is a cleanser, the next is a moisturizer and the third is a topical gel. Right now not only can you get 50% off their products and free shipping, but if you order all 3 steps in one order you can get an extra topical get for free. That’s a really good value and worth at least checking out. Trust me, your teen will love you for it, well at least for 5 minutes anyway.

Many people love to go have their nails done and if you know someone like that you should check out a home spa set where you can clean, shine and buff your way to beautiful hands and feet. You can find these sets at most malls and they are a very good buy. I have bought 2 in the last 9 years and I only replaced the lotion in these sets.

These are great for any teen girl, young women or even for some men who need to keep a clean appearance. I gave one of these sets to someone a few years ago and all I did was add some bubble bath, a nice smelling candle and put it in a cute basket. They loved it and they still talk about how great that bubble bath was!