When I heard they were looking, I recommended that they buy it online from buycostumes.com. I used buycostumes.com to purchase a Harry Potter costume for an event awhile back. I was very happy with their prices, the quality of the costume, and their shipping costs.

buycostumes.com has over 30 different Santa costumes to choose from including a Sunny Claus Costume if you live in Hawaii or Florida, and an Ultra Velvet Santa Suit, which is satin-lined. They even have suits for Mrs. Claus, and accessories like wigs, Santa bellies, and glasses. buycostumes.com is a one stop shop for all your Santa needs.

Why invest in a Santa suit?

If you’re going to be dressing as Santa year after year for holiday events in your community, at work, or just among friends and family, you need to buy – not rent – a Santa suit. You’ll save money in the long run. For some people, buying a Santa suit is a better investment than purchasing a tux. At least they know they’ll use it once a year.

If  you own a Santa suit, you’re  going to be very popular during the holiday season, too – either people want you to come play Santa at an event or borrow your costume. Sounds like a way to make a little extra holiday cash.

And believe me, there are people out there who are very serious about dressing up year after year, like the older couple we saw shopping at Costco last Christmas dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. The kids flipped out when they saw the Clauses in the checkout lane. I told Nathan that Santa was stocking up on iPods – and he believed me! Both he and Lucie were speechless when Santa and Mrs. Claus came over to give them candy canes.

So go out, get that Santa suit, and bring a little holiday spirit into a child’s life. That red suit is magical.

The Basic Package is just $12.99 if you order before November 1 and comes with free First Class shipping. Your child receives a personalized Santa letter printed right on on Santa’s custom North Pole letterhead with his real signature and official gold foil Santa Seal of Approval. It arrives in a bright green, shiny, metallic package personally addressed to your child, and has a genuine Santa Claus return address label and custom North Pole postage.

If you have more than one child, don’t worry, they will not receive the same letter from Santa. PackageFromSanta.com sends each child in the same household their very own, unique Santa letter since there are up to six different letters to choose from.

The Standard Package is just $27.99 if you order before November 1 with free First Class shipping. Besides a personalized letter from Santa found in the Basic Package plus, your child will receive a custom Rudolph letter with a real Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer photo. Kids love Rudolph, so this is sure to be a big hit.

Your child will also receive a personalized Nice List Certificate with Official Gold Foil Seal. And if they’re naughty before Christmas, you can threaten to send it back to Santa. After all, you know Santa’s address from his return address label and custom North Pole postage.

This package also comes with an autographed full color photo of Santa working away in his private workshop.  All this is packaged in a gold metallic envelope addressed directly to your child.

The Deluxe Package from Santa is just $54.99 if you order before November 1 and comes with free First Class shipping. And it’s worth every penny. It has all the personalized letters from Santa and Rudolph listed above..and a whole lot more. There’s a hand signed and numbered Collector’s Piece of Santa’s Suit. There’s a personal greeting from Santa on CD along with Santa’s own telling of the classic, “Twas The Night Before Christmas.”

The Deluxe Package also comes with a tin of Santa’s Special blend of magical reindeer food – enough to feed eight to 10 hungry reindeer!

Each Deluxe Package ships in a bright red box with North Pole stamp, and Santa’s gold foil return address label. The inside is adorned with an original Sam Doodle the Elf painting and poem. The box is worth keeping and reusing year after year to keep ornaments and decorations in – or your keepsakes letters from Santa Claus.

Ordering and guarantee information

All orders are processed within 48 hours. However, all packages will ship out within the first two weeks of December. Order now to take advantage of early bird pricing. PackageFromSanta.com also offers a 60-day, no questions asked, return policy. Simply send it back and receive 100% of your purchase price less shipping if you’re not satisfied with your purchase.

Children will remember these gifts from Santa for years. With PackagefromSanta.com and personalized Santa Claus letters, you can keep the spirit of Santa alive for your children this Christmas season.

If you’re like most parents, you want your child to ask permission before they get a snack or ride their bike to a friend’s house. So why shouldn’t they ask permission before visiting any site on the Internet? With Glubble, kids have to ask your permission to visit sites on the Internet.

What’s Glubble?

Glubble is geared to families with children under 12. Think of it like “Internet training wheels.” Glubble offers a safe online place for families where parents can be involved with their children’s Internet usage. By doing this, Glubble hopes parents can teach kids the how to use the the Internet in a positive and safe way.

Also, children are going online at a younger age. My five-year-old is constantly coming to me with requests to go to www dot something or rather and watching Sesame Street videos on YouTube with her dad. With Glubble, parents are able to choose web content for their kids the same way they choose books, television shows, clothes and movies. Glubble makes it easier for parents by packaging over 2500 kid-friendly websites like Discovery Kids or Sesame Street into “glubbles.” Parents can add to this list by easily adding sites they like.

Finally, you can see what Google search terms your children are using. What they’re allowed to search on can be filtered based on parent created lists as well. It’s also a way to find out what they’re researching for school. Think of it as a conversation starter, “So tell me more about your Greek mythology paper. Who’s this Zeus guy anyway?”

How Glubble works

First, you sign up for a FREE family page at Glubble.com and email all the adults you want to participate – mom, dad, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Then like other social networking sites, each adult creates an online profile including screen name and picture. Then the adults adds their children and create a profile for them.

Once the family page is set up, you need to activate the kids’ profiles, by installing the FREE Glubble for Families software. If you use Firefox® as your default web browser you can download the Glubble for Families™ extension for Firefox. If you do not use Firefox® as your default browser we have a conveniently packed Firefox® 3 with Glubble for Families™ extension. (It works for Windows, Linux and Mac based computers.)

You then switch it into kids mode by clicking on the Glubble Lock icon in the browser toolbar or clicking on a child’s profile in your family page. The browser then switches to a full screen mode where your child will not be able to access any other part of the computer without you putting in your family password that is only know to you. Now it’s time to let your child drive.

Use Glubble as a family gathering place

Glubble has features that introduce children to social networking. There’s a calendar to remind them of important dates. And there’s a way to leave each other short messages – sort of like a family-only Twitter site. (Remember, you’re monitoring all activity, so if siblings start squabbling you can put an end to it, even if you’re online in your office. It’s also a great way to share pictures with extended family members like out of town relatives.

Glubble’s social networking features aren’t very advanced. The calendar section uses military time, for example, which could be confusing to kids. It’s fun to leave each other messages, and it’s a good introduction to IMing. However, it’s the monitoring and permission giving features that make Glubble a fantastic tool for parents. So, open an account, set up your family page and get your kids using Glubble TODAY!

So no excuses, let’s indulge in some egg recipes!

Making crepes with the kids

I love typical French egg dishes – quiche, chocolate mousse and crepes. So when I learned to make crepes in home economics class back in seventh grade, my French mother was thrilled to share Julia Child’s Crepe Fines Sucrees recipe from Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One. It’s a bit involved and uses orange liqueur, rum, or brandy. Still, it was the recipe we loved to use.

Since my kids are a bit younger, I wanted something simpler to make, so I picked the crepe recipe from the Disney-Pixar Ratatouille movie cookbook, What’s Cooking?: A Cookbook for Kids. What I like about it is that it’s simple and the cookbook has a pictorial on how to cook and flip a crepe.

Making the batter: We made the batter on Saturday night (you have to refrigerate it overnight) so we’d have crepes for Sunday morning. I pre-measured the ingredients and let the kids pour them into the blender.

Cooking the crepes: Please be forewarned that making crepes is a bit tricky. You have to be generous with the butter, make sure the pan is hot, and throw out the first crepe, which is usually a mess. (Mine magically turned out O.K. But if yours doesn’t, I won’t tell if you decide to scarf it down or feed it to the dog.) This may be something you want to handle instead of the kids.

Also, it takes a lot of time to make 12 crepes. Either start early before everyone’s famished, or get two pans going at once. I kept my kids busy by letting them drink cafe au lait (more lait than cafe), put on music (DEVO, go figure) and having them dance around the house in their underpants. Daddy missed all the fun because he was hunting.

Colette’s Crepes

Makes 12 crepes

Ingredients:

1. 3 eggs
2. 1 1/2 cups milk
3. 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
4. 1 tablespoon sugar
5. 1/4 teaspoon salt
6. 2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions:

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender in the order listed. (To avoid getting egg shells in the mix, crack the eggs into a bowl, remove any shell bits, and then pour it into the blender.) Blend until smooth.
2. Remove the lid and scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula. Briefly blend the mixture again. Set the covered blender in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or overnight. (Overnight is best.)
3. When it’s time to cook the crepes, heat an 8- or 9-inch shallow nonstick frying pan over medium heat. To tell if the pan is hot enough, wet your fingers and then flick the water on to the pan. If the water sizzles and jumps off the pan, it’s ready.
4. Then melt a very thin pat of butter in the pan and swirl it around to coat it. I used a silicon pastry brush to evenly distribute it.
5. Blend the batter again in the blender to smooth it.
6. For the first crepe, pour 1/4 cup of batter into a measuring cup and pour the batter into your heated pan. Immediately tilt and swirl the pan to evenly coat the bottom until the batter stops running.

7. Cook the crepe on the first side for about 45 seconds, then quickly flip it with a spatula and cook the other side for about half as long.
8. Grasping the pan securely, swiftly invert it so the cooked crepe will fall on to the large plate. Rub a little butter in the pan before cooking the next crepe.
9. Adjust the heat if they brown too quickly or slowly.

• When I was melting the butter for the next crepe, I dipped my silicon pastry brush into it and brushed the previous crepe so it wouldn’t stick to the next one.
• While I was cooking, I had the crepes in a warm oven on a oven-proof plate. I turned the oven to 200 degrees F, then turned it off to keep the crepes warm but not dried out.

Toppings

Now it’s time to get the kids involved! In home ec class, we used powdered sugar and fresh squeezed lemon juice. You cannot believe how good this is. If you only have concentrated lemon juice in house, use a pastry brush to apply the juice then sprinkle the powdered sugar on top.

Other ideas for toppings are jam, melted chocolate, Nutella hazelnut spread, cream cheese, and thin banana slices. We used the delicious raspberry jelly our neighbors made from berries from our bushes and theirs. But the kids’ favorite and mine was Madhava Pure Organic Raw Agave Nectar. Wow.

Get creative and have fun with your crepes!

Topping directions:

1. Apply your favorite topping to the crepe.
2. Fold in half. Then fold in half again.
3. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and garnish with strawberries or raspberries and mint leaves.
4. For dessert crepes, you can drizzle a little melted chocolate on top, too.

Celebrate World Egg Day with more egg recipes

Here are some more recipes from my cooking blogs:

• Julia Child’s chocolate mousse (the best ever!)
• The universal quiche
• Pepper and onion egg-white omelet
• Fat Smash frittata
• Ham palascintas with mustard cream sauce
• French toast casserole
• Chinese hot-and-sour soup
• Strained eyeballs (Halloween hard boiled egg recipe)
• Hard boiled mice (Easter hard boiled egg recipe)
• Sunshine toast

Thanks to the folks at the Incredible Edible Egg (the American Egg Board) and Parent Bloggers Network for sponsoring this post and providing a stipend for the ingredients.

Note: For my regular readers, you may remember that my daughter Lucie has an egg allergy. We think she may be growing out of it, so I’m slowly adding eggs back into her diet. We’re still avoiding nuts and peanuts, though.

About Radical Simplicity

In the face of looming ecological disaster, many people feel the need to change their own lifestyles as a tangible way of transforming our unsustainable culture. Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth employs three tools to help readers begin their customized journey to simplicity:

• It builds on steps from Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence so readers can design their own personal economics to save money, get free of debt, and align their work with their values.
• It uses refined tools from Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth so readers can measure how much nature is needed to supply all they consume and absorb their waste.
• And by advocating time alone in wild nature, it opens readers to another reality with humanity as one species among many on a complex and inter-related planet.

Combining lyrical narrative, compassionate advocacy and absorbing science,  Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth is a practical, personal answer to 21st century challenges.

How to win your free ebook copy of Radical Simplicity:

1. Leave your name, email address, and blog address (if you have one) in the comments below for ONE entry.
2. If you have a blog, feel free to post about this contest on it for ONE additional entry. Then come back here and leave a comment with a link to your post.
3. Maximum amount of entries is TWO.
4. You must be willing to send me your full name, email address, and mailing address. I will forward this information to EcoBrain so they can provide you with your free ebook. If you do not feel comfortable giving me or EcoBrain your personal information, please do not enter this giveaway.
5. I will announce the winner on October 13, 2008 on this blog. I will not share your mailing info with the public, just your name. If you have a blog, I will link back to it when I announce the winner.
6. You have until midnight MT on October 12, 2008 to enter.

Prize valued at $17.95 or less. Open to legal residents of the United States 18 years of age and older. No purchase required. Up to TWO entries per person. Void where prohibited by law. By submitting your name and email address, you agree to receive relevant promotional emails and contest follow up communications from My Readable Feast in compliance with my privacy policy and contest rules.

Thanks to Green and Clean Mom and EcoBrain (read my review of their ebookstore here) for sponsoring this giveaway.