This is kind of cool, and definitely worth checking out… You can get a free, autographed picture of your favorite Disney character by writing to:

The Walt Disney Company
Attn: Fan Mail Dept.
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521

The only catch is that you have to make your request via snail mail — no electronic inquiries allowed. But if you have a Disney fan in your family, this could make for a fun little surprise that’s well worth the price of a stamp.

I’m not sure how long the entire process takes, so plan ahead — especially if you’re planning on giving the autographed picture as part of a gift.

I just ran across an interesting article on gifts that teach kids about money by David Bach (the author of The Automatic Millionaire). Here’s the rundown… [more]

For those of you that might not be paying attention, Amazon.com periodically runs special promotions wherein their customers can vote on deals. It usually involves choosing an item (out of three) to be sold at a ridiculously low price (in limited quantities, of course). This week, however, they changed things up a bit… [more]

Just in time for Christmas, World Against Toys Causing Harm, Inc. (W.A.T.C.H.) has released their list of the ten worst toys of 2006. What follows is a quick rundown of the ten most dangerous toys of the year… [more]

With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I’d share a few possible gift ideas… And remember, it’s still not too late to order online and get your stuff well before Christmas.

(1) An inexpensive set of binoculars. These can be had for under $20 (like this one), and they’re great fun on hikes. They’re also a great way to get the kids out of the house.

(2) Any sort of spy gear — we’re going for the Spy Safe Cracker this year.

(3) A headlamp. Our kids all have them and absolutely love them. I’d avoid the kid versions and spend a tiny bit more on a ‘real’ headlamp like this one (it’s a two pack). Totally worth it.

As a followup to my previous post on Nintendo Wii availability, I just received this from Amazon.com…

Important News For Amazon.com Video Games Customers

The Nintendo Wii will be available for purchase on Amazon.com on 11/19, Sunday morning (PST). We will be limiting purchases to one per household and we anticipate that we will sell through our inventory very quickly as we’ve received email notification requests over 100 times greater than the number of units we will have available for sale (i.e., for every Nintendo Wii we’ll have for sale, over 100 people have signed up to be notified).

At this time, we do not have any information on future Nintendo Wii offers, but we will post updates on future availability in the customer discussions on the Nintendo Wii product page.

Sounds like there’s virtually no chance of getting one this way, but it can’t hurt to try. It’s probably best to keep reloading the page at midnight until you can buy it, since the most detail they give “Sunday morning (PST).” Good luck!

After talking a bit about hot Christmas toys the other day, and how hard it’s going to be to find and buy TMX Elmo in the runup to Christmas, I thought I’d talk a bit about another hot Christmas toy… The Nintendo Wii. As it turns out, Amazon took pre-orders for the Wii for a short time early on the morning of September 15th, but the orders came in so fast that they had to stop. [more]

Have you had a chance to buy your TMX Elmo yet? If not, you might be hurting when the holiday shopping season is in full swing… Described as “the most secretly guarded toy of the pre-holiday season,” Fisher Price recently unveiled the TMX Elmo on Good Morning America, and it’s (apparently) already hard to find them, although you can still buy them from third-party sellers on Amazon.

Thankfully, our kids have never really coveted these sorts of ‘hottest of the hot’ toys, so we’ve never been faced with the mad pre-Christmas scramble to buy this sort of stuff. Hopefully that won’t change… [more]