This holiday season, are you looking for something unique to get your Super Mario loving child, relative or friend? Here’s a list of great finds on Etsy for kids of all ages that will remind them how awesome these games are!

Rebecca is a mom of two and believes that Super Mario 3 was the best of the best.  She’s also a parenting blogger, food blogger and lover of social media and community giving.

1. Pack away the kids summer clothes
• This took no time at all, I’m not sure why I put it off for so long?
2. Synch/Back-up/Re-organize my iPhone (for a geek, I’m really a super slacker when it comes to synching)
3. Replace my Twitter background with something that works in “new Twitter”
4. Implement Family Game reviews on this site
• Almost sortta kinda done. I wrote a post about it and have some drafts, but I’ve had a hard time getting around to actually reviewing any games. It’s a work in progress.
5. Unpack at least two of the boxes hidden in my closet
• They were the small two, but it still counts.
6. Clear a decent, reasonable path from one end of the garage to the other
• I delegated this job to the kids, but it’s still done!
7. Reorganize Penelope’s bedroom furniture and toys
• She has such a nice room in our new house, I’m very glad this is done. She has an area to play and a new bed, and it looks super cute.
8. File our income tax returns from last year (shame shame, I know)
• Taxes are done, but not filed. I’ll do that this coming week. I’m grumpy that I only worked half time last year and still owe a lot of money, but the sooner I get it taken care of the better.
9. Help the kids reorganize their playroom
• This was a job of mammoth proportions, as everything wasn’t properly organized  when it was unpacked. We ended up re-evaluating where the kids were going to play and moving the toys to a new room, and turning what was going to be their playroom into a nice little TV room. We literally dumped out every single toy, threw out any junk and started from scratch. Between the two big kids and myself we tackled it over two days and I’m so glad it’s done!
10. Figure out where I go for my mammogram and actually book it
• OK, so apparently I should have started with “read the requisition” because the number to call for the appointment was printed right on it. Surprisingly the wait time is only a couple of weeks, so not only did I make the appointment but I already went and got it done! I get extra credit for that, right?

So all-in-all I think I did pretty well, especially considering I also started exercising 3-5 times a week and sunk 60 hours into a brand new RPG. All this, all while getting ready for the holidays, taking care of myself and getting the rest I need, and cooking up a storm in the kitchen; I call November a successful month!

How did you make out with your (formal or informal) to-dos for November? And specific goals for December?

The magic of Christmas can’t be found wrapped up under a tree.  For me the true magic of Christmas has always been made up of all the ‘activities’ of Christmas.  My fondest memories of Christmas are not of the toys I received as a child but the things I did with my family.  Things like making crafty homemade decorations with my Mom, baking Christmas cookies (and sneaking them frozen from the freezer in the basement) and my all time favorite packing ourselves up in the car with Christmas Carols on the radio, and sipping eggnog while we drove around the neighborhood looking at all the lights.

As a stay at home mom, I have the luxury of a lot of time with the kids and I like to make the month of December as packed full of activities as I can.  One of our traditions has been to sit down and make a list of all the things we want to do in the month.  This past weekend we made our list up on a napkin while eating burgers at The Works, so I took the liberty of taking that list and making it pretty in Photo Shop, now its ready for my December Daily Album.

The December Daily album, was made very popular among the scrapbook crowd by Ali Edwards and this will by my 5^th year documenting each day in the month of December in a little mini album.  I keep these albums out in the kitchen in a pretty little bowl for the kids to look through.  I have to say they love peeking through the Christmas Season’s past, and getting excited to do it all again and I love filling the pages of these albums with the ‘Magic’ of Christmas.  What activities are your family favorites this season?

Katie is a bouncy kind of girl, nicknamed Kataroo (yes she nicknamed herself, why not?) like Kangaroo.  This bouncy happy go lucky girl enjoys scrapbooking by the seat of her pants at http://katarooskitchen.blogspot.com/ and getting sweaty and fit at http://lauriekatiesowrite.blogspot.com/

Search engine optimization (SEO) is something that mystifies a lot of bloggers, especially beginners. Many articles can be lengthy and overly technical, but optimizing your content for search engines needn’t be difficult or time consuming.

Today I’m sharing a few easy tips to improve the SEO for your blog without having to sift through a ton of technical articles or remember anything complicated. And the good news is, your blogging software and plugins can do a lot of the work for you!

But first a quick definition of what SEO is and how it works: Search engine optimization is the process of refining your content to raise your position in search engine results. The better your optimize your content, the higher ranking you’ll have with Google and other search engines. You don’t need a lot of statistics to know that most people click results on the first page, so the higher you rank the better! The good news is there are many little things you can do to increase your ranking in Google search results without having to understand all the technology behind it.

1. Title:

   Giving your post a catchy title is great for flexing your creative muscle, but not so great for search engine optimization. Make sure your title includes the keywords that people will be searching for, and set your blogging software to use your post title in the URL (www.blog.com/blog-seo-for-beginners vs www.blog.com/post_id=1234). In WordPress you can find this under Settings>Permalinks. Stay away from titles that don’t tell search engines anything about your post (www.blog.com/cute-saying) and save the creative spin for promoting it on social media.

2. Keywords:

   Keywords are simply the words you would type into Google if you were trying to find your post. Give some thought to what you would be searching for and make sure to use those words throughout your post. There are specific frequencies that are often recommended, but in brief just try to remember the following tips: Use keywords in the beginning and end of your post, ideally once in bold and once in italics. If you have the option to add keywords manually, do that as well. WordPress has many great plugins for this, some of which will allow you to edit your description as well. Just remember that more is not better, and keep it relevant; Google frowns on “keyword stuffing”: adding lots of extra words to try to artificially increase your ranking. This will actually hurt your SEO efforts.

3. Description:

   This is a 150 word description of your post; by default it’s the first 150 characters, but there are plugins or blogging software that allow you to change it. If you’re not sure what your description is, it’s the snippet that comes up when you share a post on Facebook. This is part of what the search engines ‘read’ when they are indexing your blog. You can flex a little more creative muscle here, but be sure to use your keywords to increase your ranking. Bonus: it also makes you look a little more polished when people share your posts.

4. Images and video:

   Google loves photos and videos, but since the it can’t actually see them, you need to tell them what they are! Use good and relevant file names (puppy.jpg vs photo1.jpg) and fill in the alternate text with something descriptive (black miniature daschund puppy dog). Try to always add a picture to your posts; there are many free stock photography sites out there.

5. Links and interlinks:

   Outbound links and “interlinks” (a fancy way of saying linking to your own blog pages) increases your ranking, and interlinking to previous posts – when relevant of course! – has an added bonus of increasing your page views.

So you see, blog SEO isn’t difficult and you don’t even need to understand all the mechanics behind it. Using these few simple tips – while continuing to create your awesome, blog content – can really help attract new readers and increase your audience. Keep creating, keep engaging, and your blog post search engine ranking will continue to grow!

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1. Buy Clairvoyance. Pick this spell up early to compensate for the lack of a proper map and save yourself some headaches. It’s available from the start of the game and it’s inexpensive. Casting it creates a Fable-esque ‘breadcrumb trail’ to lead you based on what quest you have selected.
2. Take a follower. The NPC followers might be annoying when they clog up a doorway or stand between you and an enemy, but they are almost literally worth their weight in gold. They make excellent pack mules, carrying your loot out of dungeons and some of them can perform other tasks like picking locks. There are a couple of free companions to be found early on, as well as for-hire mercenaries.
3. Get a job. Yes it might be mundane, but working as a smith, alchemist or wood cutter is a great way to get some coin early on as well as boosting your level by increasing the corresponding skills. While you’re out exploring, pick some flowers (like I need to tell you that!) and hunt some game; when you get back to town, brew up potions, tan hides, etc. and sell the products to your local merchants. Experience plus gold is a win-win.
4. Shop around. Look everywhere for free goods to use as ingredients and to sell for gold. If you’re using the alchemist’s apparatus at a store, check the shelves for ingredients. You’ll find many are free for the taking. Just don’t get too trigger happy with that action button, or you could unintentionally end up stealing something that belonged to someone. If you join one of the guilds, there are items on tables and shelves that are free for the taking as well.
5. Sell slowly. Buying and selling items counts towards your speech skill (my personal favourite). Each transaction with a merchant gives you experience, which even if you don’t care about unlocking new speech perks, can help increase your level. If you have more than five of one item, you have to option to sell them as one transaction. Instead slide it down one item, complete your transaction, rinse and repeat. All those goblets and plates you picked up early on might not be worth a lot of money, but they’re also giving you a bit of experience every time you sell one.

Not familiar with rutabaga, or not sure what to do with it? You can prepare rutabaga the same way you’d prepare turnip, and it also makes a great substitute for potatoes if you’re trying to watch your calories and/or carbs. A cup of rutabaga only has about 50 calories  - compare with 120 for white potatoes – and has less than half the carbohydrates of  potatoes as well. Plus it will load you up with fibre, lots of vitamin C and a bit of calcium and iron too. I make rutabaga oven baked fries, and not only are they delicious but the kids don’t realize they’re a vegetable!

Another delicious way to serve rutabaga is as a substitute for mashed potatoes. Here’s my easy kid-approved recipe:

 Recipe: Mashed Rutabaga

Let me tell you a story.  A few years ago during the holiday buying season I was in my local video game retailer picking up the latest hot video game. In front of me was a woman with her son.  The young gentlemen was obviously excited as he stared down at the game that would soon be his.  When they eventually got to the cash the child presented the clerk with the game.  The clerk looked at the game, looked at the child (I figure he was around 9 or 10) and then met eyes with the mother.

“Ma’am, I’m obliged to inform you that this game is rated M for mature. That’s 18 and up. It features a lot of graphic violence and a fair bit of ‘adult’ content. There are…uhh.. interactive prostitutes.”

The mother turned bright red, obviously embarrassed.  She shot a look at her son and said, “You told me this was a game for kids?!”

What really hurts me is that she then proceeded to buy the game anyway. I’m not sure why exactly.  Everyone in the packed store could see that she didn’t want to.

My point is that this situation could easily have been avoided.  It’s not like she didn’t have immediate access to that information, it’s that she didn’t know it was there.

I can’t blame her for not knowing. While the Entertainment Standards and Rating Board (ESRB) does an excellent job of ensuring that every game is rated properly, what they don’t do so well is actually inform people that they and their video game rating system exists. Sure, the rating is located on the front and back of the box but if there’s one thing being a professional designer for 10 years has taught me it’s that people don’t read.  If you want to make a point you need to hammer it home.

The ESRB rating system is fairly straight forward.  They place a basic rating on the front of the box with a more detailed description of why it got rated the way it did on the back. For example, Call of Duty is pretty much the hottest game these days so let’s grab the bullet points from the back of last years Call of Duty: Black Ops (Rated M for Mature, 18+).

• Blood and Gore
• Intense Violence
• Strong Language

From this we can establish not only what the rating is, but why the rating is.  Then, as a newly informed parent, you can make the decision as to whether or not this is something you’d like your child to play.  Call of Duty isn’t so appropriate for our 9 year old friend mentioned above, but maybe a mature teenager who isn’t quite 18 would be okay with it.

Not all games are for kids

We’re still not done though, because you can always visit ESRB.org to get even more information.  So let’s say you’re with your child and they want you to buy the previously mentioned Call of Duty game.  A quick trip to Call of Duty Black Ops’ profile page on your handy-dandy smart phone will yield the following information (WARNING: not for the squeamish):

With this… somewhat disturbing… text we now become very informed parents and can make our decisions accordingly. That’s really what the ESRB is all about, helping parents make better informed decisions.  There are six ratings in total, although only five of them are commonly used.

	Early Childhood Titles rated EC (Early Childhood) have content that may be suitable for ages 3 and older. Contains no material that parents would find inappropriate.
	Everyone Titles rated E (Everyone) have content that may be suitable for ages 6 and older. Titles in this category may contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language.
	Everyone 10+ Titles rated E10+ (Everyone 10 and older) have content that may be suitable for ages 10 and older. Titles in this category may contain more cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes.
	Teen Titles rated T (Teen) have content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older. Titles in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language.
	Mature Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

I hope you’ve found this post useful and I hope it will make you a more informed parent. If there are any take aways from this it’s the fact that there is information out there for you.  Check those Christmas lists against the ESRB website, read the back of the boxes and make the right choices for your child.

Oh, and if you’re ever hoodwinked by your child in a packed video game store. Please don’t be afraid to say, “No”. You’re the one in charge.