At Gift Fair, we found these really unique jewelry making kits from Style Me Up. The Guitar Pick Jewelry Kit lets girls make and personalize their own rock-themed jewelry using guitar picks. We also like the Sweet Key Charms kit – which lets girls decorate silver colored “keys” with rhinestones and make necklaces and bracelets.

My tween daughter thinks these are very, very cool. I’m sure we will be giving it as a birthday gift very soon. Both kits make great gifts for 8-10 year old girls.

What a great day! This afternoon, Lisa and I dropped off several boxes of new toys for the children staying at Ronald McDonald House of NY. Over the holidays, many of our customers added a donation of $1-$5 to their shopping cart. We pooled those funds, along with some of our own, and used them to buy educational toys to fill the playroom at this amazing facility.

Due to the generosity of our customers, these children will be playing with Green Toys Fire Trucks, Green Toys School Buses, Best Friends Scrapbooks, Perplexus Rookie, Kid-O Cutting Fruit, Citiblocs Little Builders Rattle Blocks and many more gifts for girls and gifts for boys.

The educators at RMDH are so appreciative for all we and our customers have done. To quote their Director of Programs: “We LOVE LOVE LOVE our toys.”

To learn more about our GIFT HERO Gives Back program, visit our Donate page.

(Note: 100% of the monies collected are used to purchase toys for Ronald McDonald House of New York. The toys are purchased at our wholesale cost. GIFT HERO does not earn a profit on sales of products that are donated to charity.)

Last Week, at the New York International Gift Fair, Stefanie and I discovered a number of exciting new products to carry on GIFT HERO. My daughter Maya is most excited by the Loopdedoo, a spinning tool that lets girls design and make their own friendship bracelets in minutes! Maya has always loved making jewelry for her friends. The Loopdedoo is great for birthday parties, sleepovers or even just a rainy day.

Arts and crafts kits like the Loopdedoo make great gifts for girls.

 At GIFT HERO we love science kits. We think they are the perfect kids gift. We carry science kits for preschoolers and up. Thames & Kosmos is one of our favorite brands. Their kits are of incredible quality, include many many experiments and teach all sort of important skills and lessons.

I was very excited when Lisa discovered the new Archaeology Kit: Egyptian Pyramid. 8 year old Benjamin is very interested in Egypt. He went through a phase where he wanted to know all there was about gods and goddesses and he is fascinated by the pyramids.

With this awesome kid’s gift for ages 8, 9, 10, kids play the role of archaeologist as they explore the pyramid model and the treasures buried within. After using hieroglyphics to decipher the secret to unlocking the pyramid, they use tools and techniques similar to those of a real archaeologist including excavation, conservation, dating, and remote sensing to carefully excavate a sarcophagus, death mask, and four canopic urns from inside. They will also learn about ancient Egyptian customs, hieroglyphics, mummification, and pyramid construction.

Since Benjamin’ birthday was in December, I don’t have an obvious “excuse” for giving this kit to him. But, maybe, I don’t need a reason to give him an educational toy!

I am having a hard time saying goodbye. One of our favorite products, Zolo-a-go-go, has been discontinued by the manufacturer. We have had Zolo-a-go-go on GIFT HERO since we first launched several years ago , and it has consistently been one of our best sellers. Now, we only have a couple left and when they are gone – that’s it.

What makes it so special? Well, it’s really like no other building set. The “Picasso-like” pieces let kids create their very own unique works of art. The set is a great unisex gift for kids ages 5 and up, and even for adults! It in an educational toy that encourages creative thinking and kids never seem to outgrow it.

If you are one of the lucky ones to get the last remaining sets, enjoy!

Recently, I was very moved by a piece written by Lisa Belkin. In “Welcome to the Club: Lessons from One Mom to Another,”  Belkin captures the emotional transformation that many mothers feel when they become mothers – which nobody can prepare you for. I remember that feeling after my son was born – that first day, I looked at myself in the mirror in the hospital and saw myself as “someone’s mother” for the first time. It was an amazing feeling -and I have to admit – somewhat terrifying!

Yesterday, I shared Belkin’s article with my Facebook friends and had many comments from friends (and even my own mother) about how they were touched by the piece. Within minutes, friends in Switzerland and Russia had shared it with their friends.

I had the pleasure of meeting Lisa Belkin several months ago at a small gathering of Princeton Alumnae in New York City. At that time, Lisa had just given notice to the New York Times, for which she had written her entire adult life. She had decided to leave the NYT to enter the digital age and become the Senior Columnist for Life/Work/Family at the Huffington Post. She spoke with our group about why she made the decision to leave and her hopes for her new position. I wish Lisa the best of luck at Huffington Post, and look forward to more amazing posts like this one.

You can visit Lisa Belkin’s page at Huffington Post and subscribe to her RSS Feed for like her Facebook page.

I’m in love with My Blackboard Roll Mat from Seedling. This simple arts and crafts kit includes a blackboard mat, chalk and an eraser…that all rolls up and ties with a bow! It is lightweight, portable and just genius. I wish this kid’s gift for 3 year olds had been around when Benjamin was younger.

I gave this gift to my niece and it is now her go-to activity for the car and restaurants. It is one of our favorites and best sellers. New York Magazine loved it too – they included it in their holiday gift guide (with www.gifthero.com as the place to buy it!).

My daughter Maya fancies herself a budding fashion designer. She loves to “design” her own outfits using her own clothes.

So I’m always on the lookout for arts and crafts kits that have a fashion theme. One of the new products we recently added to the site is the Fashion Design Playset from Scratch Art is perfect gift for girls. Girls use the stylus to scratch designs into the black surface of the Scratch Art stickers, revealing fabulous accents. Then they can “dress” the 8 international models however they choose. The set includes 8 postcards that girls can sends to their friends to share their creations – or just post up on a bulletin board at home!

We spend a lot of time searching for the best products to sell on GIFT HERO. One of our most trusted sources for recommendations is the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio website, which provides unbiased, independent reviews of hundreds of toys. The Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award Seal has become a well-recognized symbol of trust and quality.  Stephanie Oppenheim appears regularly on shows such as Today to share her latest batch of new finds.

Many of the award winning toys we sell at GIFT HERO have won Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Awards.  One of my favorites is Gobblet Gobblers by Blue Orange Games. It’s based on the rules of tic-tac-toe, but with a twist. The game pieces are different sizes, so the larger pieces can “gobble up” the smaller pieces on the game board. My daughter Maya and I played this when she was a little younger, and she would routinely beat me! A few years later, we graduated to Gobblet, the version for older children and adults (also an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award Winner).

Visit our Award Winning Toys department to see all of our Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award winners.

My 8 year old daughter Maya loves to make (and wear) her own jewelry. Jewelry making kits are one of our favorite go-to gifts for Maya’s friends.

Our absolute favorite is the Ultimate Shrinky Dinks Jewelry Designer. Girls design and color their own plastic pieces and then bake them in the oven until they shrink and get hard. This kit includes enough stuff to make over 100 pieces of jewelry, so it’s perfect for playmates and will last through many months of use. Maya loves to make jewelry for her friends too.

Other favorites are the Fab Badge Maker and Cap it Off Jewelry.