We are always looking for new products that make great birthday gifts.  So we are always adding something new into our product mix at GIFT HERO. To make it easier to find the latest additions, we have created a NEW products category that you can link to right from our home page.  Also, when you use our gift finder tool or the shop button, you will see new products identified with the NEW button.

We love to hear from our customers! Many of the new products we add come from recommendations from our friends and customers. So when you come across something really special, please email us at info@gifthero.com or post a comment here on the blog or on our facebook page.

One of our brand new products is the Solar Car book by Klutz. My son Josh’s friend told him about this amazing kit, which enables kids to make their very own solar-powered car. Kids will enjoy becoming experts on solar energy!  This makes a great birthday gift for and 8-10 year old boy.

My son Josh is a sports fanatic. Every morning he reads the sports section of the NYT and follows all of the teams’ stats – especially for football.  Even though we live in NYC, much to the chagrin of Josh’s grandfather (who is an avid NY Giants fan) Josh’s favorite team is the New England Patriots.  We have a close family friend who is a Patriots fan, and he got Josh excited about American football at an impressionable age – 5 or so. My husband is British and is much more concerned with his own kind of football (soccer), so Josh is also a big fan of European soccer clubs – Tottenham Hotspurs are his fave if you care to know.

So of course GIFT HERO carries lots of toys for the sports-obsessed child like Josh. We just added in Football Guys from Kaskey Kids. It’s a realistic football playset with two teams, refs, a large paying field, goalposts, and more! We also carry Baseball Guys, Soccer Guys and Soccer Girls.

I am not playground Mom.  I never enjoyed taking Benjamin to the playground and chasing him around making sure he was safe.  I found it very boring.  Thankfully, for years, we had a wonderful nanny who loved to run and play and swing and slide and (yuckiest of all) play in the sandbox.

That said, I just read an article called 10 Unusual Playgrounds From Around the World and want to get out there and play!  These playgrounds are incredible.  One is actually for adults only – it’s in Berlin and you must be 16 or older, preferably a senior citizen, to play there.  Three of the playgrounds are in the US — Clemyjontri Park in Fairfax County, Virginia, Yerba Gardens in San Francisco, CA and Teardrop Park, in Battery Park City in lower Manhattan (pictured). 

I know people who plan to visit all the Major League Ballparks in the US or all the big amusement parks around the world.  I aspire to visit these 10 playgrounds…I’ll have to also visit Japan, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Dubai and Spain along the way!!!

The chicest thing in the school yard this back-to-school season, is definitely the Color a Messenger Bag from Alex Toys.  There are at least 3 of them on the hooks outside of Benjamin’s classroom (and there are only 10 girls in the class).  I live near several elementary schools and see so many girls proudly walking to school with their gorgeous creations.

The Color a Messenger Bag is the perfect gift for a school-aged girl.  It is a very sturdy bag, large enough for daily books and the other “stuff” they need to carry around.  It comes with 6 brightly colored permanent markers in their own cool pouch.  Coloring in their own masterpiece will build fine motor skills as the girls will want to patiently color within the lines and customize it to make it their own.

My sister and her family just moved to Toronto this summer. My nephew is six years old and in first grade and my sister is pregnant with #2 – due in November. This summer, as she was busy ordering furniture and other things for their home she complained about how few stores in the U.S. ship to Canada and the difficulty she was having finding some of her most familiar brands. Since Canada is so close to the U.S., I guess that I had assumed that wouldn’t be the case.

So I promised my sister that I would do my best to get GIFT HERO to ship to Canada – and starting today we are! Now my sister can get awesome birthday presents for my nephew’s friends, and great holiday presents for my nephew.

Since GIFT HERO launched in March, we have had many inquiries from Canadian customers and bloggers – thank  you to all of you and we are pleased to say that we can now ship to you. Please visit our customer service page for details on shipping rates and policies. We would also love to hear from you about some of your favorite gifts that you would like for us to carry.

Canada here we come!

Girls today are much more fashion aware than we were as kids.  As a young girl whose mother bought clothes for us at JC Penney, I really had no idea about “fashion” until I was much older. My daughter Maya, not even six, definitely has an eye for the trends – she will tell me when she thinks something isn’t fashionable, and also proudly announces, “I have good taste.” And she does – my husband has her coordinate his ties with his suits for important business meetings

Hot off the runway, GIFT HERO just got in a few new products for the fashion-minded girl 8 years and up.  My personal favorite is Bling by Number Tote Bag, pictured left. Girls can either follow the instructions or use their own creativity to make their own unique design. Ready for the Runway?  For the aspiring designer, check out the Fashion Design Studio Set and the Graphic T-Shirt Designer.

Today is National Play-Doh Day. Just in time, we have added to GIFT HERO this new, organic fun dough gift set made by Miss Brittany, a NYC Preschool teacher. We met Miss Brittany and discovered her product this summer at an event for the Children’s Museum of the East End and we fell in love with her product as we watched all of the children gleefully playing with this amazing dough.  We knew this product would make a perfect birthday gift for a 3 or 4 year old.

Everything in this kit is made right here in the U.S.A. using non-toxic, organic ingredients. It includes three 7 oz. tubs of colorful fun dough, a child sized wood rolling pin, four wood stampers, and a toddler-sized “Organically Awesome” apron. The packaging is made from 100% recycled materials and is printed with soy ink. Even the tubs for the dough are made from 100% biodegradeable corn plastic. It doesn’t get any better than this! This is the perfect gift for toddlers starting nursery school!

Benjamin is officially a kindergartener.  School started last week with a typical NYC “transition” schedule and today is his first full day.  Drop off at the door to the classroom at 8:10, pick-up at 3:20.  It’s a long, full day and I can’t wait to hear all about it (not that he shares much with us).

Lisa and I are both in back-to-school mode and at GIFT HERO, back-to-school also means the start of birthday party season.  Our children have already received invitations to parties in the next few weeks.  We are so excited that we put together a Back-to-School gifts section with some of our favorite ”school-themed” gifts for those early fall birthdays. There’s something guaranteed to delight every child.

We recommend Color Dominoes for 3 year olds, the Pretend & Play School Set for 4 and up, Magic School Bus Science Kits for 5 and up, Do You Sudoku for 6&7, and the award-winning Physics Discovery kit from Thames & Kosmos for 8-10 year olds.

Whatever you choose, when you order from GIFT HERO, we ship the next business day so you’ll get your gifts quickly. Plus, order a gift bag and avoid the hassle of gift wrapping.

Today is a tough day for many of us.  I worked in lower Manhattan for years.  On 9/11/2001, I was fortunate to have been at our advertising agency in midtown when the planes hit the World Trade Center.  Many of my colleagues were in the office on the 47th floor of the World Financial Center and watched the whole tragedy unfold.  Thankfully, everyone in our group survived (although our company lost a few employees who did work in a travel office in the WTC).

I’ve struggled whether to tell Benjamin about the events of 9/11.  He’s not quite six (actually, 5 and 3/4 today) and I don’t think he’s ready to learn that the world can be an evil place.  I have told him about the Twin Towers.  One of our favorite books is called The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.  It is the true story of Phillipe Petit, a young French aerialist and street performer who dared to walk a tightrope between the towers (which stood one thousand three hundred and forty feet high) on August 7, 1974.  It’s a beautiful book and story, written and illustrated for children by Mordicai Gerstein (it was a 2004 Caldecott Winner). 

At the end of the book, it says “Now the towers are gone.  But in memory, as if imprinted on the sky, the towers are still there.  And part of that memory is the joyful morning, August 7, 1974, when Phillipe Petit walked between them in the air.”

This summer, we spent our vacation in Great Barrington, MA and pretty much visited this micro-creamery every day. It is really the best ice cream I have ever tasted, and whenever Maya saw the store sign, she would dart down the street screaming “SOCO!” at the top of her lungs and run right through the door.  We even met the guy who makes the stuff and comes up with new flavors – he even let us try the honey lavender flavor before it was perfected to get our opinion – yum! The secret ingredient is 16% butterfat cream – which gives it an amazingly rich flavor.

Alas, when vacation was over I lamented the fact that we would have to wait until next summer to have SoCo again, until my friend told me she saw it at Fairway right here in NYC. Turns out that SoCo is going to sell to restaurants and select food stores within a 200 mile radius of its micro-creamery. Thank heaven for SoCo!