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!

Lisa and I are the Guest Gurus this week on Buttoned Up (www.getbuttonedup.com) a wonderful site and company dedicated to helping you get organized. Buttoned Up was founded in 2004 by four amazing women who “felt the need to get their lives organized but were unable to find products that could help them control their chaos. They wanted to be liberated from the rigid organizational systems that they bought annually and stopped using after just a few weeks. After several years of trial, error, effort and research, they started Buttoned Up whose mission is to give women the tools they need to live an organized life not a life of organization.”

Each week, the Gurus at Buttoned Up ask a different expert to share thoughts with their readers and newsletter subscribers (and Facebook Fans and Twitter followers!). Our subject was Easy and Inexpensive Summer Birthday and Gift Giving Tips. It was a great exercise for us to think about ways to celebrate…with little effort and cost. Our favorite is a backyard picnic with decorate your own cupcakes and lots of outdoor games kids of all ages will enjoy. We were also psyched to share some of our favorite birthday gifts for under $15.

Buttoned Up has tips to get organized, you can become a part of their community, and even find out about their terrific line of products (including some new back to school products available at Office Depot). Visit them at www.getbuttonedup.com.

At GIFT HERO, we care about the environment and try to do our part to reduce waste. That is why we offer reusable gift bags made from 100% recycled milk jugs. We also use minimal amounts of recycled paper inside of our shipping boxes and offer free shipping over $75 – in part to encourage people to order larger shipments to reduce the number of deliveries and therefore, gas used by delivery trucks.

We also offer products manufactured by Green Toys – a company dedicated to making and selling environmentally friendly products like this Sand Play Set. Like all Green Toys products, this product is made from advanced environmentally friendly materials, helping to reduce fossil fuel use and co2 emissions.

We also sell these other products made by Green Toys: Gardening Set, Recycling Truck and the Tea Set. In addition, we sell the Magic School Bus Science Kit Going Green, which teaches children about recycling through fun experiments, and the new book 10Things I Can Do To Help by World, published by Candlewick Press. AT GIFT HERO, there is bound to be a “green toy” for any child on your birthday list.

As the school year winds down, my kids are getting their summer reading lists from their teachers. Luckily, Josh and Maya love books and we have tons of them. We also go to the library a lot and borrow books. As a child, I loved going to the library and I loved to read. Going with my kids brings back memories of my own childhood and Little House on the Prairie and Nancy Drew.

Books make great birthday gifts, too. Especially if it is a book that the child is not likely to have already. That’s why GIFT HERO offers some incredible books that we love and that most kids are not likely to have already on their shelves. We also love puzzles, and there are some wonderful book and puzzle sets that we offer for all age groups.

One of our favorites is Go, Go America by Dan Yaccarino, shown to the left. This hilarious book takes kids on a journey across the United States with a family that seeks out rather bizarre yet interesting trivia about our 50 states. We think this book is best for ages 5 and up. Older kids will get more out of it and can read it by themselves. On GIFT HERO, we pair this up with the U.S.A. States & Capitals 63 piece puzzle.

For younger children, my personal favorite is The Animal Boogie. This fun story reads like a song and comes with a sing-a-long music CD. After a few readings with mom and dad, kids can put on the CD and “read” the book themselves. We also offer the matching Animal Boogie puzzle. This book and puzzle set makes a wonderful birthday gift for a 3 or 4 year old.

So get those summer reading lists ready and buy a book for that birthday child on your list!

We are visiting friends at their weekend house tomorrow. I’m excited to get out to the country and hang out with this awesome family. They have 2 boys – a 5yo and a 3yo. I was racking my brain trying to figure out what to bring as a hostess gift…wine, dessert, flowers, a scented candle? Then it dawned on me — a toy the whole family will love.

Toys and games make great gifts for families. I love it when we have weekend visitors and they bring games we can play together. Zolo a-go-go is fabulous for this. It is a plastic play sculpture set that lets kids of all ages create their wildest imaginings! The colorful, wacky shapes enable maximum creativity and the things you create look cool enough to leave out on display in the living room. The set includes 48 pieces in a reusable vinyl carrying case.

GIFT HERO sells many toys and games that make ideal hostess gifts. Check out our new outdoor gifts section for perfect gifts for summer visiting.

We all love to procrastinate, right? If you are like me, you often wait until the last minute to buy a birthday gift. Luckily, GIFT HERO makes it really easy for me! No matter how late I am, I quickly find the right gift on GIFT HERO and have it shipped directly to the recipient in one of our awesome, eco-friendly gift bags. We even include a matching gift card that includes your personalized message. If I think the birthday child will get it after her party, I just shoot the mom an email and let her know the present is “in the mail.”

Kids love to get packages in the mail, and quite often parents don’t let their kids open all of their presents at once anyway. So next time you are running late, let GIFT HERO save the day! You can even ship to multiple addresses and get a whole month’s worth of presents out of your way in minutes.

At GIFT HERO our plan is not just to help you buy and give the best birthday gifts…we will give you tips to make the whole gifting process better. One of my favorite tips for mothers of 3-7 year olds is stockpiling.

We have a sign-up sheet outside of Benjamin’s nursery school classroom where all the parents list the date of their child’s birthday party. With 21 children in the class, not only does this help avoid overlapping parties and scheduling conflicts, it helps me plan ahead and buy gifts in advance.

To stockpile, I buy 4-6 gifts at a time and I keep them on a high shelf in Benjamin’s closet (so he can’t find them). For children I know well, I use the Gift Finder to find a gift that child will love. For those I don’t know as well, I either buy a unisex gift to give to everyone or I select a boy gift and a girl gift and on the day of the party, I don’t have to scramble to run to a local toy store and try to find something suitable.

If you buy your gifts from GIFT HERO, you will get free shipping on purchases over $75 – which should give you another incentive to stockpile!

These days, many grandparents live far away from their grandchildren and face many challenges in staying connected. My own children have grandparents in Florida, and Stefanie’s son has grandparents in Phoenix. Sending a gift for a birthday or other special occasion can sometimes prove very challenging. Grandparents often don’t know what gifts are age appropriate or brands that are good quality. On-line shopping options can be overwhelming, and the thought of going into a store, selecting a gift, buying gift wrap and wrapping the gift, and then visiting the post office to mail it can be overwhelming. No wonder many grandparents either send gift certificates or ask their son or daughter to “pick something out.” This used to happen to me all of the time! Young children don’t really appreciate what a gift certificate means, and often get disappointed when that is what their gift is.

So it is no wonder that GIFT HERO has proven so popular with grandparents. We have had grandparents shipping from New Jersey to Denver, from Connecticut to California, and from Florida to Massachussets. GIFT HERO takes all of the stress out of finding the right gift. Some favorites include the Make-Your-Own Cards and Make-Your-Own Frames. This is great because it gives the child something they can make and then send back to the grandparent. For older children, Make-Your-Own Masterpieces enables children to make their own works of art using Matisse-like design pieces. Grandma and Grandpa will love hanging up their very own “Picasso”.

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?