a peek inside the fishbowl

We have a winner! Thanks for your entries everyone!

This great little giveaway is brought to you by Fishbowl patron Tradex. (You may recall the RESP post I wrote that was inspired by Tradex!)

But before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to mention a couple points to tie a bow on that previous RESP post. If you have child who turned 15, 16 or 17 in 2012 you should note that:

• In order to qualify for the 20% Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG) on contributions for a beneficiary in the calendar year in which they turned 16 or 17, a minimum of $2,000 in RESP contributions must be made for that beneficiary before December 31 of the year in which the beneficiary turned 15 years old.
• The last year that the CESG is payable is the calendar year in which the beneficiary turns 17. In other words, you don’t have a year after the child turns 17 to make that contribution. If his or her birthday is in December, you have less than a month!

RESPs can add up to some nice (free!) money from the government, so it’d be a shame to miss out on it due to a misunderstanding of the rules.

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Surely one of the most welcome gifts this time of year is a gift card to a grocery store. Just yesterday I was picking up groceries at Sobeys and I could practically FEEL my wallet breathing a sigh of relief as I handed one over. That’s why I’m pleased to tell you about a new giveaway over at the Sobeys website.  It’s very easy to enter, and you can win $100 gift card! And if you don’t win, at the very least you may find a way to make holiday entertaining a little easier! You can read more about it here.

So we’re in the throes of Family Advent. The first few days have gone off without a hitch:

Day one: gingerbread construction. I think this one is self-explanatory.

Day two: charitable giving – This goes back to their allowance (which you can read about in more detail here) but to summarize, a percentage of their allowance is earmarked for a donation to a charity of their choice. Emma chose to give to WWF-Canada (specifically, she’s putting her money towards the Spirit Bear) and Sarah decided to invest in someone’s small business with a micro loan given via Kiva.

Here’s Josephine! It goes without saying we’d love to see her get closer to her goal! :)

Day three: make paper snowflakes – I wasn’t sure how well this one was going to go over with an 11 and 13 year old (er, and a 50-year old), but we all had a lot of fun.

Now on to Day four! And totally unrelated, I am in the middle of drafting another giveaway. It’s a really good one… and the timing couldn’t be better! Stay tuned!

This post is part of our 2012 Family Advent, a.k.a. 25 Days of Christmas. You can read more about that here. Looking for some Christmas-related activities to try out yourself? Check out my Pinterest board.

I love photobooth photos, don’t you? The process is firmly lodged both in my mind and in my heart: four flashes of friends crammed in a very tight space, spilling out with laughter, waiting with baited breath for the machine to spit out the results (which may or may not be terrible), holding the strip by the edges amid shouts of “let me see” and “don’t touch it, it’s still wet!”

It certainly is a process, isn’t it?

For awhile my daughters and I were adding a strip of photobooth photos inside Mark’s birthday cards. Or was it Father’s Day? I can’t remember. That tradition was forgotten somewhere along the way, but my love for the photobooth experience has never wavered.

I figured something out recently and I wanted to share it with fellow photobooth lovers (er, and iPhone owners) … a way to fake your own photobooth photos!

First, download the 99 cent Pocketbooth app from the iTunes store.

Then, find a photobooth near you! We went to our usual location at Carlingwod Mall. Other photobooth locations around in Ottawa (in case you’re wondering) include Bayshore Shopping Centre, Billings Bridge Centre, the Ottawa Bus Central Station, and St. Laurent Centre (according to Photobooth.net anyway).

As much as I recommend the real experience (the posing, the waiting, the drying) the digital experience comes a close second. And it’s cheap, and easy!

Once you’re positioned in the photobooth, open the Pocketbooth app and turn your camera around so it faces you. Don’t forget to choose your background! (Will it be the 1960s orange polyester curtain? Or sky blue? Or both?) All you need to do is launch the app and take your photos.

That’s it! The Pocketbooth app allows you to email the photo strip or save it to a roll. I haven’t tried printing it yet, but it almost doesn’t matter. I’m just happy to have a digital file I can share, and to have a renewed memory of my photoboothin’ days.