Whitney and I teamed up with some of our favorite bloggers to offer you a totally high-end Canon T4i DSLR Camera 2 Lens Bundle and a funky cool Epiphanie camera bag to carry it around. We all chipped in to buy you a nice present to say Thanks and Happy Mother’s Day and Enjoy Spring and You’re Worth It!

This camera is so much nicer than anything I’ve had my hands on so let me list out the specs for you:

• Canon T4i DSLR Camera with 2 lenses: 18-55mm IS II Lens + 55-250mm IS II Lens
• New 3.0-inch Vari-angle Touch Screen Clear View LCD monitor II (approximately 1,040,000 dots)
• 8GB SDHC Card, Mini HDMI Cable, Hybrid CMOS Sensor, New Digic 5 Image Processor
• Ok, I’m in over my head; learn more about the camera
• the Charlotte camera bag in Metallic Chevron print designed for girls on the go with removable padded dividers to protect your lenses

Please wait patiently for the rafflecopter widget to load. There are dozens of ways to enter, choose your favorites.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Holy cow, right?!! It’s about a $1200 value!! Sponsored by the ladies of Boston Mamas, Eat Blog Run, Make and Takes, Mom Generations, No Biggie, Petit Elefant, Pinterest You Are Drunk, Rage Against the Minivan, Rookie Moms, The Happiest Home, This Week for Dinner, and Todays Mama.

This is sort of advertise-y, but I love sending cards with my kids’ pictures on them. I’ve used Treat.com to send sympathy cards, birthday cards, and thank you cards throughout the year. I’m simply a huge procrastinator when it comes to getting something in the mail, but somehow ordering online helps me get it done. True, my signature is not on there in ink, but the card gets sent, and that’s a win.

Case in point: There is currently a Hallmark card on my coffee table, half-written to my childhood friend whose father passed away. It’s been there for three weeks. I couldn’t find the words to finish and I’m going to see her at his memorial this weekend before the card goes out.

On a happier note: After my parents take us on a vacation, I usually send them a thank you card made from a photo taken on the vacation.

Mother’s Day is almost here.

Whether you’re looking for a card for your mom, grandmother, sisters, or in-laws, you can have have 100% control of the content. They have 450+ Mother’s Day designs to choose from, ranging from funny to sentimental.  Add your own pictures and text to make them your style.

(25% off all Mother’s Day orders by using the code TREATMOM25 before midnight on April 30. )

Can your baby do anything particularly incredible that your adult body can’t do? Your mission is to photograph your little companion sucking her toes or sitting in the sink for a bath.

Share your baby’s contortionist achievement in the comments.

Little pre-walkers need lots of practice and encouragement. Walk around slowly holding junior’s hands and take crazy cute pictures.

If possible, get someone to take a picture from behind with baby and your adult hands supporting him – also adorable!

[photo of my family by alex cave]

Follow the hashtag #babeinamug on Instagram and you’ll quickly see that this is a Thing.

Thanks to the clever blogger MommyShorts, who composed the collage above, babies and mugs are being photographed with this perspective trickery — and shared on social media.

If you are able to capture such a shot and participate in this #babeinamug meme, please tag us, too, so we can see your cute babe in a mug! (@rookiemoms or #rookiemoms). Post your photos on twitter, Instagram, or on the Facebook page of MommyShorts.

Our friend Kelly posted this one today.

Since my kids are already at school (and much older) I had to use this paper doll of Scarlett, which means that my cleverness is hardly worth noting as she was already cup-sized!

Head over to Instagram and follow @MommyShorts or explore the tag #babeinamug!

Some photos are not quite worthy of Facebook, but are must-sees to extreme enthusiasts of your child. That’s why my husband and I set up a few Photo Streams on our iPhones.

A photo stream is simply an album that can be shared with a group. The photos are located in the cloud, so no need to send group texts, emails with photos attached, or push them out to Facebook. You don’t need any special app. All you need is iOS 6.0 or later.

Since my parents all have iPhones, but don’t check Facebook very often, this is a way to push all the grandparents a photo at once. We invited them all to subscribe our family photo streams by adding their email addresses. When we share a picture to our stream, they get an alert on their phone. If they want to look at the stream at anytime, they just click the icon that says Photo Stream and has a cloud icon at the bottom of the screen when you are in the Photo app.

To get this photo sharing party started, on your iOS devices, go to Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream, and turn on My Photo Stream and Shared Photo Streams.

Now, when you take 17 pictures of your baby sleeping, instead of putting them all on Facebook, simply share them with the Photo Stream you’ve created. To do this, click the sharing icon that you normally use to decide if you are going to push a photo to a text message, email, or Facebook, and a new choice will be Photo Stream.

In addition to the stream intended for our parents, I also created one just for me and my husband called “House”.  When I was shopping for dining tables for us, I walked around a store snapping photos with my phone. I added the photos to the House stream. Ryan’s phone alerted him that there were pictures added, and we were both able to post comments on the pictures. Now that the House stream exists, we can use it whenever there’s a need to share a photo just between us. Perhaps he’ll receive a picture of an overflowing toilet one day, while he’s on a business trip.

I can imagine using this feature if you have a shopping BFF who you’d like to share ideas with. (Note to Heather: If you tend to like the clothes I send you, set up a Photo Stream for us to share. If you don’t, pretend like you haven’t read this post.)

Here’s how it looks after you’ve shared a photo and your stepmom, who does not have a Facebook account but does have an iPhone, sees it.

Expectant parents can create a time-lapse video of their pregnancy – and get health tips along the way – through a new, free, interactive iPhone app called CineMama available from the March of Dimes.

Watch your belly grow as you take as many or as few pictures as you like over the course of your pregnancy.

The press release for this was targeted at women, reading “CineMama allows expecting moms to take and upload their photos to the web, easily turn the still pictures into a video, and share it all through social media, such as Facebook and Twitter,” but it seems obvious to me that partners should put the app on their phone, as they will be the one taking the pictures.

More details on iTunes >

Twin parents, I know you get tired of answering our questions, especially the dumb ones. But, to the rest of us, there’s something so exciting about parenting twin children, and also? There’s something very magical about having a sibling your exact same age. (I certainly had a twin fantasy as a child. Did any of you?)

We invited readers to share their twin photos with us, thinking that everyone would like to admire double-the-cuteness in each photo.

Enjoy!

contributed by Janette S

Max and Wyatt contributed by Brian R

contributed by Stephanie V

contributed by Vicky S

Boone and Wyatt contributed by David V who blogs at The Daddy Complex

Due to my inability to totally control this blog, the links to the other pages of this post are down below the “related post” images. See those tiny little 1, 2, 3 numbers? Sorry!

First, a disclosure: I know the author of this book and she is a lovely person. Second, I won mine at the EVO conference I attended in May. There was an Oprah moment where the presenters announced that everyone should reach under their chairs and that ten people would have won a copy of Elevate the Everyday: A Photographic Guide to Picturing Motherhood. It was a little bit thrilling to find that “WINNER!” card with my fingers and feel lucky.

Heather and I met Tracey at our first blogging conference. We were wowed by her because as a professional photographer, she had already published two books, and was much further along in her motherhood journey than we were. She still is.  And with that perspective in mind, she has written a guide for moms to help them document their lives through images. She provides prompts and examples of beauty in the small moments as well as tips for landing on compositions that work.

If you want to improve your photography, this book may help, without getting too technical.

Here are a few nuggets I gleaned from Elevate the Everyday:

1) Try shooting from a bird’s eye view. I did this a fair amount with my babies by standing above them on the bed.

2) The images you take of yourself holding your baby in your arms in the mirror will be favorites in future years when they are too big to fit in your arms. I can attest to this. It’s happening.

3) The “trimmings” as Tracey calls them are the details that mark the moment in time. That thing your child insists on carrying around or wearing around his neck can be the subject of a photo. Her feet dangling from a chair will remind you later that her legs did not yet reach the ground. The toddler toothbrush lying on the counter of the sink, the mess left after a long LEGO session. I love this picture of Julian from a vacation we took when he was two-and-a-half. He was really into water play, so when we needed some downtime, we gave him a few containers from the kitchen of the condo we had rented, and set the hose on a trickle. He kept busy this way every afternoon.

Congrats to Tracey on this lovely book. (Amazon link)

When I unpacked this 2010 ornament (below), I felt bummed out that I hadn’t made one for last year, 2011, when the boys were all in their matching jammies and Sawyer was barely out of his fourth trimester. The prior year, in an “I have my shit totally together” moment, I created this ornament on mpix.com — a local-to-me business that makes the best of the best photo prints and some durable nice ornaments too. This year, I wanted to go back in time and create a 2011 photo ornament, but when I browsed some of the photo sites, they were only selling 2012 ornaments. Whoops.

You see, last year I had a little baby and creating photo ornaments was low on my list. I’m excited to share that I figured out how to do this. It wasn’t too hard. It only costs about $10 plus shipping.

So I got in my time machine and created a very sweet ornament in minutes.

1. Process the photo on picmonkey.

I picked my favorite photo of the boys that would work as a circle, uploaded it at picmonkey.com and cropped it as a SQUARE. I centered my holiday message with last year on it. I saved it in the highest resolution I could.

2. Create round ornament on mpix.

Christmas ornaments are rather buried on the MPIX website under the heading “Decor”. Find ornaments, choose the DIY custom option and follow instructions for uploading the image. OMG so cute, right?

I got so excited to see my preview that I created another ornament for 2012 (and wrote this post while the thing is still being made and shipped!). Because my Superhero photo is tightly packed with awesome, I skipped the holiday message just included the year.

In future years, I won’t have to lament that we missed commemorating Sawyer’s first Christmas because I made this flipping cute ornament. If I had more time, I might go back and create these ornaments for ALL my children’s Christmases. It would certainly be faster than making them baby books or year videos.

Then again, maybe I’ll wait ’til next year.

This is part of our Makin’ It series of fun crafty projects for parents. Not all are photo things either, we make food too! See more projects here.

[This post wasn't sponsored or anything. I paid about $23 plus shipping for these ornaments and a heap of blown-up prints]

Updated 12/13 The ornaments arrived today and look terrific!

photo: c. jane create on blurb’s facebook page

Most of us don’t have the photo chops to make a book as lovely as the one I’m sharing below by Casey Mullins. She is a talented photographer (and writer) and has an eye for editing that makes her pages so beautiful that I almost want to put a book full of Casey’s daughters on my own shelf. But that would be weird.

I will venture to say that anyone’s photos will be made more amazing in a Blurb book.

I played with the Blurb website last night and loved the experience. You can upload photos from your computer, grab them from your Facebook account, or from Instagram. I like this because the ones I’ve uploaded throughout the year are already my “best of” pics. No need to pick through everything on my hard drive or phone. The step-by-step process leads you through editing a photo book that gets published on high quality paper with a hardbound cover.

Last year, Heather and I brainstormed themes for photo books.  Your comments enhanced our list and I thought I’d post them here in case you are inspired to put together a book for your partner, your parents, or yourself.

When you use Blurb, any photos you choose from Facebook can bring the comments along with them, so if you have already shared a milestone moment online, you can preserve what family and friends said in response. This can be great or not, depending on how sarcastic your friends are.

Note: We are affiliates of Blurb.com, but seriously, I have seen the books in person myself and they are covetous.

Disclaimer #2: If your images are not super high-res, you’ll want to order a smaller book than the one shown above. The Blurb system will guide you in the right direction and tell you if your photo is too small.

PS #3: Here’s a 25% discount for Blurb: HOLIDAYTHANKS

PS #4: I have to tell you that a gigantic book like Casey’s costs upward of $100, so don’t shoot for the stars unless you have deep pockets.

This is part of our Makin’ It series. We strive to include hands-on projects for all skill levels of craftiness, ie if you’re better with a computer mouse than with a sewing machine, we get that. See more projects here.

Sometimes you just gotta get out of the house. We say it all the time. You might not really want to, but if its noon and you haven’t showered yet or if it’s 4pm and you’ve been rattling around your cage all day, IT IS TIME. I’m getting stir crazy on your behalf.

Armed with a little one and a stroller, here are five super duper easy activities to do right NOW (and please girl, if the baby is crying, just push through, $5 says he’ll chill out once you get rolling):

1. Take a sensory tour of the neighborhood. Stop and smell the roses and crinkle the trash beneath your feet. Enjoy a baby’s eye view of the world. And chill the eff out.
2. Walk or run your errands. Put on your jogging shoes and make it all the way to the post office or take-out restaurant. Impressive, you just got something done!
   [Preschooler variation to engage cooperation: go huntin']
3. Take a walk on the wild side. Rather than strolling your usual haunts, seek out the bizarro sights and sites. Take photos.
4. Pretend you’re in Paris. Is your baby small enough that you could enjoy cafe culture without whining? Go for it.
5. Scope out some big wheels. This activity is perfect for those vehicle-lovers out there. Can you park in front of a construction site and entertain your kid? For how long?

All you need for these mini adventures is a small child with age-appropriate carrier and yourself. Report back on your success stories or botched attempts! Now, git.