….and your kids tell you “this day is so boring.” On this rainy, gray day in NYC, we thought we would share some picks for rainy day activities. When Benjamin gets gifts like these, I hide them to bring out when he tells me he is bored and I need something to keep him occupied when I need to work. Alex Toys offers some wonderful art kits like the Large Art Studio (pictured). Creativity for Kids has tons of really fun kits including Make Your Own Sock Puppets . These are more are available at GIFT HERO.

One of the most annoying parts of bringing gifts to birthday parties (at least for us) has been what bag to bring the gift in. Who really has lots of clean, plain shopping bags around their house? You don’t want to use a bag from a toy store if you didn’t buy the gift there and you don’t want to use something too fancy or too declasse. GIFT HERO gets it…and we also get that you hate to wrap gifts especially when they are oddly sized.

We designed our gift bags to solve both problems. They have a drawstring close so you don’t have to wrap the gift in paper first and they look awesome and are reusable (and eco-friendly). What kid won’t jump for joy when he sees your GIFT HERO present in his stack of gifts?

We have always felt it is important to give back and to teach our children the value and importance of charity. Lisa built much of her career at Unicef and Save the Children and Stefanie worked on many cause marketing programs at American Express and is involved in local children’s charities in NYC. When figuring out what we wanted GIFT HERO to be, we always knew it must have a cause component – we wanted every child to feel as fortunate as our children feel.

To start, we are partnering with the Urban Horizon Early Childhood Discovery Center – an amazing Head Start program in the South Bronx, NY. Together with our (very generous) customers, we plan to fund enrichment programs such as school trips for these children and their families. We have both made personal donations to jumpstart the effort and many of our customers have added $1 – $5 to their shopping carts for this wonderful cause.