MoseleyWorld

Christmas season is upon us. Exactly two weeks until Christmas Day! Are you ready?

Got your holiday card done? Check out Tiny Prints for holiday cards, invitations, custom address labels, and more.

And how long has it been since you’ve had professional portraits made? Look, these don’t have to be stiff, Olin Mills style portraits. Fun, hip. Natural.

Portraits of you you, your little ones, pets, or the whole family make great Christmas presents and we know a great photographer (shameless plug for Chris Moseley Photography) who still has some open portrait session slots and provides super fast turnaround!

Contact Chris to schedule a time to make your holiday portrait at your home (think: in front of the Christmas tree, maybe?), on location or in the studio. We’re offering a 2009 Recession Buster special (starting at $95 for mini portrait creation sessions with free digital image files with minimum portrait purchase) - Email us for details. Check out the Chris Moseley Photography blog to see some family and kids portraits.

For the Parents or Parents to Be: Shop the MoseleyWorld Amazon Store .
Rockabye Baby CD’s - the music of the Beatles, Guns N Roses, the Eagles, No Doubt, Bob Marley, Radiohead, U2…lullaby style. Using glockenspiels, vibraphones, and mellotrons the rockabye baby crew covers your favorite songs. Believe it or not, you’ll love listening to Sunday Bloody Sunday with your tot.

Top Holiday Deals & Frustration-Free Packaging in Toys : You know those toys you get that are sealed inside industructable plastic and then wired in so tightly you need tin snips to open them - all the while your kid is saying “gimme, gimme.” Check out Amazon’s Frustration-Free packaging and their top holiday deals. all in the new easy-to-open Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging.

Electronics, Computers & Home Entertainment

Canon PowerShot S90IS The best point and shoot camera for serious shutterbugs. No, I’m not kidding. Don’t believe me? OK, well these guys think so.  “World’s best pocket camera” “It’ll never leave my pocket” and “the best compact camera I’ve ever used.” No, I’m sorry ladies, I am a Canon guy and don’t know anything about those cameras Ashton Kutcher gets paid to hawk.

Klipsch IMAGE S4 In-Ear Enhanced Bass Noise-Isolating Headphone treat your favorite iPod user to an upgrade, a serious upgrade. Well worth the $79.95 price tag! Lots better than the OEM Apple earbuds and even better than some higher priced competitors.

iPods and Accessories Enough said?

Kindle Wireless Reading Device: $259.95 Amazon’s most wished for, most gifted and #1 bestselling product. Want to read the NY Times? Well, you can get it and thousands of other books and publications delivered wirelessly to your hand-held reading device, the Kindle. If you don’t know what it’s all about, visit Amazon’s website to see what you’re missing.

Windows 7 Netbooks Under Starting $350 : Find the biggest selection of netbooks with Windows 7 Starter in the Amazon.com netbooks store.

Magazine Subscriptions as low as $5 : Magazines make great gifts, and during December some are as low as $5 after instant discounts including House Beautiful, Smart Money, Cosmo,Marie Claire, Popular Mechanics,Esquire,Town and Country, Veranda,Seventeen, Country Living and more. That’s $0.42 per issue.

Give a Subscription to your local newspaper. Help keep ‘em in business.

Need more ideas? Check out the links below.

You know those things that once you get, you scratch your head and wonder how in the world you ever lived without? Like TiVo. Or, sliced bread, for the older reader. Well, introduce yourself to Skype’s free video calls for another one of those wow! moments.

On a recent trip to Europe with my dad, (aka "Gran" to our kids), I was able to make real-time video calls home so I could see my family’s smiling faces. With regular voice-only telephone calls, Saxon’s attention span lasted a few sentences. But video calls was something entirely different. Lots of animated stories. Lots of fun. Again, why didn’t we do this sooner.

click here to sign up for Skype

When we returned, we got the grandparents set up on Skype (trust me, it is so, so easy) and have even been Skype-ing with Saxon and Samantha’s littlest cousin, Patrick, in Chicago. So, if you aren’t skype-ing, get with it!

If you don’t have a camera, get one at the Skype store (link: Get a new High Quality Video webcam. Make the clearest, sharpest, Skype video calls yet.)


Hint: Better camera = better video call experience. But we’ve used the built in camera on the notebook and it works fine.

Today, a MoseleyWorld correspondent (Carey M) was at Babystyle and was told the only remaining Babystyle store left in Texas (NorthPark Centre in Dallas) will also soon be closing. The closure of Babystyle NorthPark follows the closing of a bunch of their stores in March.

Babystyle at The Shops at Mission Viejo (OC, CA) shuttered its doors May 27. Not sure about the future of other Babystyle stores, but this has to be bad news for the company, since the NorthPark store had a primo location and always seemed to be packed.

20% off everything in the store while it lasts. Oh, and don’t bother taking your Babystyle bucks. As of today, their not accepting any Babystyle bucks (Babystyle’s equivalent of frequent flier miles) until further notice.

UPDATE 1/27/09: Last summer BabyStyle was bought during its bankruptcy by the Right Start people. Greg at DaddyTypes reports that it looks like Right Start (and BabyStyle and Tiny Ride) are going down for the count. Babystyle’s website doesn’t work any more so I guess they are done.

We’ve just returned from a week-long trip to Italy (more updates forthcoming) and seeing vastly different cars is one of the things I really enjoyed. Our rental car was a 4-door Opel Corsa hatchback (GM Built?) with 5-speed manual shifter and Opel’s new diesel “ecoflex” engine. I was amazed at how peppy a 75 horsepower engine could be.

bologna, italy - starting an alfa romeo convertible the old-fashioned way.

Most of these cars only a raised eyebrow (kind of a “What in the world were they thinking” when they made such a small car?), but this time I kept seeing a car I really like.

Last year Mercedes-Benz introduced the 2008 C220 Wagon “Estate,” a new/improved version of the C-Class wagon that was sold here from 2002-2005. But I saw more of these new body style wagons in Italy than I’ve seen in total the older C-Class wagons in the U.S.

If you’re like me and think the Mercedes Estate might be a good replacement for a gas-guzzling GMC Yukon, don’t bother rushing to your local Mercedes dealer to get one. Like the Opel Corsa diesel (52 mpg), the Mercedes Estate is not sold in the USA.

Saxon in her Bouncy SeatOriginally uploaded by Chris Moseley.

Saxon loves hanging out in her Oeuf Lounger, aka Bouncy Chair, even though it’s very low tech. Can you imagine a kid being happy in a chair that’s not vibrating, playing music and flashing lights (all at the same time)?

The chair bounces when Saxon moves - whoa! What a concept. No batteries required. As a bonus, the Oeuf Lounger comes in a plain, solid color! Oy vey, how long has it been since you’ve seen anything for “baby” that didn’t scream B-A-B-Y?

OK baby-owners parents, can you help? I’d like to have some kind arc-shaped “activity bar” with visually-interesting things (?) that I could snap onto each side of the Lounger. Something like a mobile but connected to the chair.

We hate to see Saxon staring off into space when one of us is at home solo and we’ve jumped in the shower or are cooking dinner. Yeah, she looks really content, but I’m sure she would rather be learning…

ANY IDEAS? Post ‘em in comments - thanks in advance.