It’s usually that time… time for me to roll out a bigger, better Holiday Gift Guide than I did year before and watch y’all go nutso with excitement, which always brought me more joy than you can even imagine. This would have been my 11th year. Change is hard, but often necessary. After clocking 485…
10th annual holiday gift guide
It’s 2021 and this is my 10th Holiday Gift Guide. (And I’m giving away $13,000+ in holiday gifts, too!) Can you even believe that this holiday gift guide is in its 10th year? It has grown from pretty humble beginnings before I’d even been blogging for a full year into one of the most robust…
A (virtual) list of extracurricular activities
This list of extracurricular activities was updated on September 7, 2021. Ten months into what I hesitate to call any kind of “new normal,” we’ve gotten into a decent groove doing just about everything virtually — and not just work and school. So I wanted to create a post with a running list of extracurricular…
2020 Holiday Gift Guide
It’s my 9th-annual holiday gift guide, y’all! I’m not gonna lie, friends: my holiday gift guide almost didn’t happen this year. As you’ve heard me say for years, this little labour of love takes many hundreds of hours to put together. And, well, 2020 just hasn’t blessed me with a lot of free time. Like…
Exploring the Apple Ecosystem & its DSLR-quality camera phone
[This Apple Ecosystem post was updated on May 13, 2022.] I bought into the beginnings of the Apple Ecosystem back in 2002 when I purchased my first desktop computer — an iMac, discounted thanks to Apple Education Pricing — and an iPod. I loved how they operated synergistically and, more important, that I didn’t have…
How are you managing your child’s RESP contribution?
My parents started a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) for me on a pretty bare-bones working-class income. They were by no means even upper-middle class and yet with exceptionally strong budgeting and saving skills, they made their first RESP contribution when my brother and I were young, and used those savings to help send us…
Our virtual classroom: homeschool room ideas
It’s a sad, confusing, frustrating time for educators, parents and students alike across the country who are about to navigate distance learning or some kind of in-class model that feels much too experimental for many of us. Whatever decision you’ve made, or are about to make, if it’s the right one for your family’s needs,…
The best parental control app for iPhone: Apple Family Sharing
I’d been an Android user for years, prizing great photos above all else with my smartphone. Apple just wasn’t cutting it once the Samsungs and Pixels came on the scene. But that meant that once my kids got hand-me-down iPhones, only Big B could text and FaceTime with them since we haven’t given them SIM…
Fun things to do at home for kids
Here we are in our new normal. And it’s no less weird than it was three weeks ago. Hopefully, self-isolation is temporary and we only have to endure 24/7 family time for a couple more months. Like my cousin recently said to me during a Messenger chat: “Families are not meant to spend this much…
Free homeschooling resources & a kid-friendly schedule during COVID-19
I don’t know about you, but I never signed up for homeschooling. In fact, I proactively explored a teaching career by test-driving it for a year in South Korea as an ESL teacher. A year was enough and I went home knowing it wasn’t for me. But here we are. Like many of you, I’m…