ChocoTreasure

ChocoTreasure sent us a variety of their chocolate eggs with toy surprise inside.
They are very unique. The chocolate is molded right to the plastic.  You unwrap the foil, then break off the chocolate that is molded to the plastic egg, then pop open the egg to find the toy surprise inside. They have many toy surprises with different themes like Hello Kitty. Minions, Madagascar Penguins, and Sports. The toys can be anything from a miniature deck of cards, a miniature puzzle, a small magnetic circle with character on it, to slap bracelets, and even plastic figurines.

They are a lot of fun! See the website here http://www.chocotreasure.com/

Some kids like the chocolate, some kids just like the toy! :)

Check out their website to see where they are sold near you or online!

Kwik Stix Paint Sticks in NEON

Recently, The Pencil Grip Company had sent us a variety of their Pencil Grips and Kwik Stix tempera Paint Sticks. We had a giveaway not long ago too.

We really like all of The Pencil Grip company products. They really do have excellent corrective pencil grips, as well as other helpful products for children. My twins are in love with Kwik Stix.  They are very creative boys who love art, but they don't like coloring very much. I have all kinds of wonderful crayons and markers. We keep all of our crayons and markers in very convenient, and easily accessible caddies. I have bought them tons of coloring books, and even printed out coloring pages. They would complain about coloring nearly every time I asked them to color. That is until we were sent Kwik Stix.  Now they can't get enough of it.  Kwik Stix are like a non-messy combination of paint, glue sticks, and crayons all tied into one. They use Kwik Stix literally every day now, when before they only colored once in a while or when I asked them to. Plus, they complained every single time. Now they ask me for more pages to color, go figure! 

They love that they dry fast. They love that they are bright, brilliant colors. They love how they don't make you have to push down hard to get great color coverage. They love that there are no paper on them, sometimes that can be a sensory thing. One of my twins has some sensory quirks.  They were 32 week preemies. Many times preemies have sensory issues. 

You can use Kwik Stix on many surfaces too! You can use Kwik Stix on paper, construction paper, notebook paper, coloring books, card stock, printer paper, rocks, EASTER EGGS, sea shells, wood, canvas, and they still dry fast on everything!




Well now they came out with a new set of Kwik Stix in NEON, and they would like us to do another giveaway!!  Yay! 

In this giveaway the winner will receive one 6 pack of Kwik Stix Neon, and one 6 pack of Kwik Stix primary. Just check out our photos below and under that you will find the giveaway! I set this giveaway up so that every day there will be a new set of options to gain more entries towards winning the prize!

Check out all of their awesome products at http://www.thepencilgrip.com/

Stay tuned for a review and giveaway for their newest Kwik Stix set, Metalix!

Entry-Form

Picasso Tiles - Budget Friendly Magnetic Tiles

Picasso Tiles sent us some of their tiles for review. We tried them out by themselves, and with other magnetic tile brands. They do work well, and they are somewhat compatible with other brands for the most part, but are 1/16th of an inch larger and can make magnetic tile structures unstable. We have found that they make anything we build very unstable, droopy, lop-sided, and uneven if we mix them with other brands.

The best thing about Picasso Tiles is that they don't break the bank! Picasso Tiles look just like other name brands, but are more affordable. For example, Picasso Tiles 100 piece set current retails on Amazon.com for $77.99. Magna Tiles 100 piece set always retails at $119.95. They never go on sale for any more than 5-6 cents off of the retail price of $120. Picasso Tiles actually do go on sale at much lower prices.

So for those of you who would really love to get some magnetic building tiles for your kids, Picasso tiles are much more easily affordable. Magnetic tiles have so many benefits for kids. I highly recommend them for every family. 

Picasso Tiles have a great variety of magnetic tiles of many shapes and sizes, as well as vehicles to go along with the magnetic tiles.

Check out their website at http://picassotiles.com/

Check out some of the things my kids built with Picasso Tiles.....

Pinterest Secrets from a Pinner with 104k Followers

These are my own Pinterest strategies and secrets that I vowed to keep to myself until I reached 100k followers. I did not use tips from other Pinterest users. I never paid for a course or class. I never paid for Pinterest advice. I never paid to boost my Pinterest or Pins.  I never paid for followers. I never shelled one even one penny to get to over 100k.  I also do not use a virtual assistant. I do not use a pin scheduler website or Tailwind. I do not pay anyone to pin for me, or advise me in any way for Pinterest.

Here are 27 secrets, tips, and bits of advice that have worked very well for me. 

1. Your Pinterest is a showcase. You need it to sell itself. You need it to be a useful guide of some sort. You must have crisp, clear, eye popping images as board covers. Your board covers must represent each board, and DRAW your eyes in at FIRST glance upon loading your Pinterest page. Try to avoid text on board covers, unless it is a special circumstance where it really works with the board. If you have a social media strategy account, or something similar like that; there is really no way to avoid this. just do your best.

2. Your boards should be arranged by types in groups. Your boards that you created should always come first, then should come the group collaborative boards that you joined. Arrange those the best you can by biggest boards with the most followers first. Keep in mind that you want to keep your boards grouped by type as well as you can. 

3. Your board titles are a BIG DEAL. They should not overlap or overextend the visible title area on each board, on your main Pinterest page. Try your best to make sure your board titles are short, precise, and come up in a SEARCH on Pinterest. If I want to see Easter egg recipes, and you have an Easter egg recipe board but your board title is something like Easter Swag, colorful eggies, or dye recipes; I will not find your board in an Easter egg recipe search. That means I will not follow your board. If I cannot find your Pinterest account through a search by specific subject or topic, I will not be following you and you will be lost in the Pinterest abyss. 

4. I highly advise against using matching themed board covers for your Pinterest boards. It draws your eyes away, not in. It makes your boards look like a big sea of the same thing. It does not pop, and 95% of the time it looks really tacky on most Pinterest accounts. I also highly advise against making all of your board covers the same color, same pattern, same season, or same Holiday. It makes it look like a sea of the same thing as well.

5. Your Pinterest account name is very important. If you follow another Pinterest account or a board of another pinner, you want them to see that the person following them or their board looks important and stands out from everyone else. If you use your name or something that makes no sense to others, you will not stand out and look important. If you sound like every other random person or Joe Schmoe, you will not stand out.

 For example, if I used my name Kristen S. for my account; no one would take notice of it when I followed them or their boards. Unless you are a celebrity, I advise against using your name as your Pinterest account name. If Drew Barrymore follows one of my boards, I am surely going to take notice. I will not take notice is Joanie Baxter follows my board. Who is she? She does not sound important to me. I am not going to take notice, and I will most likely not go check out her Pinterest. No offense to Joanie, she just did not sound like a celebrity, company, website, blog, or anyone super important.

 If Kristen S. follows Joanie B's light table board, that will mean nothing to Joanie B. However if  Light Table Guide follows Joanie B's light table board, Joanie B is going to notice that in a big way. She is going to check out my Pinterest and most likely follow a few of my boards, or maybe even follow my whole account. Either way, it's a win-win situation. 

6. If you want more people to follow you, then you must follow lots of boards in Pinterest. You want to try to follow boards within your niche. Follow tons of boards under any subject matter that you cover on your blog and Pinterest. The more boards you follow, the more pinners will notice your boards and Pinterest account. When you follow a board and you have an important sounding name on Pinterest, you have a 75% chance the owner of the board you followed will follow you back in some way. When you follow a bunch of boards or pinners, eventually Pinterest will stop you from following more for a few hours. I have been doing this for a long time. It does not mess up anything. It just blocks you from following for a few hours. 

7. You can change your Pinterest name, Pinterest account name, or board titles at anytime. Any links you have out there on the internet will redirect. Seriously. So if you feel you really should take my advice and change your Pinterest account name, Pinterest name, or names of your Pinterest boards.. nothing is stopping you. I have done it, more than once!

8. The first 14 boards on your Pinterest accounts are your store front window. It is crucial that you have the best boards you have up there. You can work in ONE seasonal or Holiday board up there in the first 14 boards, never have more than one up there at a time. I advise moving your featured seasonal or Holiday board back down with the others right before, or the day that season or Holiday is ending. Your very first board should always be your blog's Pinterest board. It should be titled the same title as your blog, or a short version of it. It should also consist of only pins from your blog!

9. NEVER EVER EVER EVER delete a board that you created, no matter what. You may have a board that bombed, or just is not going anywhere. No big deal, that happens to everyone, Just clear out the board. You can then recycle the board. I advise clearing out the board, re-title it to  TBA or Coming Soon. Then move it to the way bottom of all if your boards, like at the very bottom past the group collaborative boards that you are on. No one is going to notice it there, and if they do who cares, More than likely anyone who notices it will be thinking, oooh wonder what awesome-ness they have in store. It may even prompt them to keep coming back to your Pinterest looking for that board to have turned into something new!  You can delete the pins or move them to another board, or even to a secret board.  When you delete a board, you delete some of your followers, seriously. You are sabotaging yourself and your Pinterest account, if you delete even one of the boards you created.

10. Collaborative group boards are very important, but if you join the wrong ones then it is pointless. Never join a board that has less followers than your overall account has. If you have 2000 followers and the collaborative board you joined has 500, what can they do for you?  Not much unless it is a REALLY popular board and has high repins on many pins. 

I have several hundred collaborative boards, and I add new pinners to most of them every month. I take board requests to be added, and many other pinners do too. The rule of thumb is never stay on a collaborative board that has less followers than your Pinterest account has, unless it is a seriously popular board with tons of repins.

The only exception should be if the board is a really great board that is unique, or if the board belongs to a friend and you want to support your friend on Pinterest.

11. Always make long, thin, eye popping pinnable graphics for every blog post you create, or anything you are "advertising" on Pinterest. Long, thin, eye popping pins catch the attention of other pinners browsing 85% more than smaller, shorter, wider pins. Do not go pin crazy. Do not keep pinning the same post to the same boards over and over. It just irritates board owners and other pinners.

12. Red seems to catch the attention of other pinners browsing, more than other colors. So try and work a pinch of red into as many of your pins as you can. Just don't go crazy with it, and make it hurt peoples eyes.  :)

13. Never pay to get Pinterest advice, never pay for a Pinterest course or class. Never take Pinterest advice from any pinner with less than 100k followers. Especially never take Pinterest advice from anyone with under 10k followers.  If someone has less than 10k followers, what really do they know?  Not much, they have NO business giving you advice.  There is a Facebook group that does just this. They go by the name of " " party.  All of the group admins have low followers, yet they give daily advice and check lists to their followers. My very best advice to you is to never take advice from anyone with less than 100k followers, unless they have fake followers. Users with fake followers also have no real advice to give you.

I am constantly seeing these websites that you can take a class or course, or buy an e-book from and 99% of them are totally bogus.  Remember people, this is the internet. There are thousands of schemers out there wanting the next quick buck and you could be their next victim. A friend of mine paid $75 for a Pinterest course. The friend asked me to check it out. So she gave me the link, and her access info to log in.  I looked through the whole thing and laughed at it. Most of the advice was total junk, and the rest was stuff you can get for free on hundreds of blogs out there on the internet. What a waste! Then I googled the owner of the website. I found her Pinterest pages. She had 3.  None of them had more than 4000 followers.  So, uh what authority does she have to be offering a $75 Pinterest course?  NONE AT ALL!  Luckily my friend was able to get a refund. Seriously, do NOT pay to get Pinterest advice.

14. Never buy followers. They are useless numbers. They will not get you ahead in the real sense. They just make it look like you have a lot of followers. It is a really tacky thing to do too. There are some Mom bloggers out there who paid for followers. They think they are doing themselves a favor to get ahead, when all they are doing is setting themselves up for failure in the future. 

Spotting a fake follower is fairly easy. You just look on a Pinterest users accounts follower list.  If you start seeing a bunch of followers with numbers or random letters as names, they are a fake follower. If you see followers that have a red pin as their account photo, 85% of the time that is a fake follower. You have to go check out the pinner and their boards to determine if they are a new user or fake user. If you see followers that all have the exact same boards and the exact same pins within the boards, they are fake followers.  Another way to spot a Pinner with fake followers, is go look at their repins. If they have little to no repins on most of their pins in most of the boards they created, that is a HUGE indicator that they paid for fake followers. Never be intimidated by Pinners with fake followers. They may have 100k, 200k, or even more than 500k followers. They are not special, they are just jerks.

There are many websites out there that offer to give you followers for a fee. You pay them, and they will have their service follow you on a bunch of fake accounts they created. Some of them are groups of people that create a bunch of email accounts and them in turn go and create a bunch of fake Pinterest accounts.  Then they just use their big database of fake Pinterest accounts to follow your account.  Some pinners think this is a great thing, they want to cheat to get ahead. The bloggers who see that as a really cruddy thing to do have notified many companies out there about this and how to spot a user with a lot of fake followers. So, it is not going to get these people ahead.  How can a fake follower help you?  they are not going to repin your pins. They are not going to tell others about your Pinterest account or your blog. So they are not helping you.  

Occasionally every pinner will get some fake followers, especially if Pinterest was recently hit with spammers. Many spam accounts will get created in this case and you will end up with a few fake follower accounts. However,  there should not be tons of fake followers on any pinners account. Not unless they paid for fake followers.  TACKY!

15.  Do you want to know the reason that most Pinterest accounts with over 1 million followers, and little to no fake followers has so many followers? They were an early adopter account with Pinterest. They were lucky enough to find out about Pinterest when it all began, and they were lucky enough to get an invite to create an account. When Pinterest first began, it was one of those types of websites that you had to get an invite to get on there and make an account. These early adopters are the elite few that are going to stay lucky for life on Pinterest.  You see, an early adopter gets suggested to every new Pinterest user. So every new pinner creates their account, chooses their interests and then gets suggestions on what pinners to follow. The suggestions are early adopters most all of the time.  

16. If you have a pin from your own blog that you pinned to a large, high traffic collaborative group board and it has a massive amount of repins; use it to your advantage. Let's say you pinned it to a collaborative board with over 75,000 followers or better yet, over 100,000 followers; take it back. Go to the pin, edit it and change the board it is in to your blog board on your Pinterest. The board with your blog title and only pins from your blog. Then repin that same pin back to the board where you removed it from. That way the board gets a fresh look at the pin, and it helps your Pinterest account. These pins are golden building bricks to building your empire on Pinterest. Your pins may have to sit on a board for over a year before they get massive amounts of repins, but it is worth the wait. You can only move pins that you pinned yourself. Only do this with pins from your blog. 

17. Bump up your pins in your own boards. You can go to a pin, edit it and then move it to another of your boards. Then right away move it back to the board it was on. Then your pin gets bumped up. I love doing this with pins that have high amounts of repins. It really helps to boost the board and the pin. Never ever do this in someone else's collaborative group board. Only boards you own and the pins can be anything you pinned, not just from your blog.

18.  I highly advise against having alcoholic beverage boards if you are a "kids and family" category blogger/pinner. It looks trashy, it brings down the look of your Pinterest. I also highly advise against allowing alcoholic beverage pins in your boards if you are a "kids and family" category blogger/pinner. It is against many religions. Many people are turned off by it. You never know who has a recovering alcoholic in their family and may be offended by it. If you have a board for alcoholic beverages and you are a "kids and family" category pinner, move it to the bottom of all of your boards, even under all of the group boards you are on. Some people may be so offended that they choose not to follow you, or unfollow you. If you have been allowing alcoholic beverages to be pinned to your boards, I advise removing those pins and asking your collaborative board pinners to stop posting alcoholic beverages.

19. Keep a close eye (ask best you can) on your collaborative boards. Periodically check them to make sure that unwanted content, spam, or post repetition is not taking over your board. Pinners that use pin scheduling websites, sites like Tailwind, and Virtual Assistants tend to re-pin the same pins to the same boards repeatedly. They don't do this maliciously, they just may not know how to use the pin scheduler very well.  Just warn them to make changes so that it does not keep occurring. The downside is that you may have to delete a few of their pins. 

If you have been hit by a spammer, go edit your board, find the pinners name and delete them. Check the box to delete all of their pins.If they are pinning spam like crazy and too fast for you to keep up, just quickly go to their profile and BLOCK them!!  problem solved. The downside, you have to go delete all of their spam pins. The upside, they are no longer on any of your boards.

20. Not all pinners pin good content. Beware and be aware of this. You may add a pinner to one of your boards, and their pins are less than desirable content. I this case, you may need to delete the pinner from the board and tell them you are sorry but their content is just not the right fit for your board. Just be kind about it. Sometimes pinners keep violating the rules and pinning the same pins to the same boards of yours over and over, that can be really annoying and frustrating. In this case, you may need to block that pinner and delete the extra pins. You could also just edit your board find their name and delete them. Remember to check the box to remove all of their pins too if you want their pins gone.

21. Avoid using your Pinterest for your Pyramid or Multi-Level home business. This will make your Pinterest undesirable to followers.  Designate one board for this. Keep the pinning in it to a minimum, and put the board low within your boards. You don't want something like this up top. 

Never let sellers pin their sales stuff to your boards, ever! There are way, way, way too many sellers out there of Usbourne books, barefoot books, essential oils, clothes, jewelry, Jamberry nails, Pampered Chef, Tupperware, Mary Kay, Avon, and the dreaded It Works. Where as the products can be good, if you have 50 it works consultants and 36 Jamberry nails consultants pinning up your boards, it is going to destroy your Pinterest. Trust me, the second you allow this on your boards, the people who sell it will come out of the woodwork like crazy. No offense to anyone who is with one of these companies. I actually like pampered Chef, Tupperware, Mary Kay, and Usbourne books. I buy essential oils, not from one of the (high-priced) multi-level marketers but that is a whole other blog post!  LOL

22. One great way to help your Pinterest account to go far is to switch to a Pinterest business account, get your website address verified, and apply for rich pins. It makes a big difference, but the other 21 points of advice are important too.

23. It is very important to have this snippet of code in your blog posts if you want Pinterest to work well with your blog.  If you are on blogger or any other blog website, and you use a redirect for your .com address you have to use this code or it will tell pinners your website is unsafe and deter them from clicking ahead to go view your blog post. This will discredit you and your blog, and your Pinterest in a big way. Pinterest sent this snippet of code to me and I put it in every blog post. For some reason, when I edit a blog post for any reason it kicks the code back out. So you must re-add it every time you edit your blog post if you are on blogger. (maybe everywhere) I was instructed by Pinterest to add it at the very top of all of the code in every blog post. You must edit where it says "title of your article" and "description of what your article" accordingly for every blog post.

24. If you have a great idea for a new board, start it in a secret board. Pin to your hearts desire to that secret board. Go nuts even and pin binge! No one will know the wiser and you will not be spamming anyone with too many posts of one type. Then you can either move the posts (they let you move 50 at a time) to the new board it will go to, or just change the board from secret to public. This works for beefing up boards that have low amounts on content(pins) in them. There is such a thing as spamming with good stuff too. The rule of thumb is never pin more than 5-10 pins of one type to a board in one sitting.  Take a break, and come back to adding pins to that board again later. This is for direct pinning though. If you are pinning the content to a secret board, it won't matter.

25. If a pin does poorly you have several options.  You can delete it and re-pin it. You can delete it and re-pin it at a different time of day and see if it does better. You can move it to another board and move it right back to see if it starts getting noticed. In a last resort if the pin is still not getting repinned, you should go make a new pinnable image for it. Replace that image with the one in your blog post, and then try again. If this sill does not help, add more content to the blog post, maybe try rewording it and making a new pinnable image for it as well.

26. Pinterest has a few quirks. Sometimes when you change a board cover, it goes right back to the same one it was on before.  I have found that waiting 15 seconds before completing the change helps sometimes with this. When you edit a board t change the board cover, you can move those board covers up and down to find the perfect eye-popping image! If you see nothing that works, go pin some stuff that looks like it could and play around with it for a few minutes to get the best board cover. Pinterest boards sometimes move on their own. Sometimes several move on their own. This is super annoying and very time consuming.  I have no idea why this happens, it just does. So keep an eye on your boards to see if they have moved around from time to time.

27. Round out your Pinterest. Make it a one stop shop for those coming to your Pinterest page. If your Pinterest page's main theme is Gardening, have some supporting boards by subject that cover different aspects of gardening. If your main theme is kid friendly food, make sure you have lot of eye popping kid friendly food boards that cover many aspects (ie. pasta, veggies, breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, etc.)

Want another secret? I plan to add more to this soon. So please check back for more secrets and tips to be added! Guess what? I have already added twelve additional tips since this blog post was released. 

So, I have shared 27 very real, very true secrets and tips with you for Pinterest. I did not charge you, I did not make you follow a mailing list to get a special top secret invite to view this information. I did not ask you to do anything for this information. Right?  

So, maybe in return you could tweet about my blog or my Pinterest and give my link.  Maybe you could share my blog or Pinterest with link on your Facebook account or Facebook page.  Maybe you could pin this blog post on Pinterest, or pin some of my pins in my boards. Maybe you could be kind and follow me, or a few of my boards on Pinterest.  If you do, comment or email me and let me know.  I always appreciate nice people who do kind things. I am likely to do something nice in return too! 

If you use my advice and over time it helps, email me and let me know!  If you need help and want me to look at your Pinterest account, email me. I am happy to help when I have some free time.

Some recent light table play and light play

Here are a few things we have shared on the Ultimate Light Table Guide Facebook group, and Instagram lately.  I have left captions below each photo to say what is in the photo! Be sure to check out and join our Facebook group!

Kodo Light Lab with Lavender scented Epsom salts, some window blocks, and a few salt and pepper shakers from the nearby Spanish party store There are also various pony beads, and other random beads as well for an extra aspect of sensory.

DIY colored rice. We just used Liquid water colors and let the rice dry before playing with it.

Guidecraft PowerClix Solids and  Discount School Supply magnetic tiles in the window sill and Pokemon action figures.

Whitney Brothers Light Table with Diving Gems from the dollar general, 

Jonti Craft multicolor large light table with large playsilks from Lakeshore

Whitney Brothers light table with plastic eggs from Oriental Trading

Monoprice light box (panel) with magnetic tiles by Guidecraft