*This post is sponsored by Barnes & Noble thank you for supporting the brands that keep The Mama Notes in business!
I’m excited to kick off a holiday partnership with Barnes & Noble today — one of our favorite stores! As you probably have realized by now books play a huge part in our lives and reading with Piper is something I look forward to all day. Luckily Piper’s as equally as excited about books, too! This holiday season since Piper is a little older and more aware of things we’ve started a few new holiday traditions that I hope to carry on each year and I’m really excited about the new traditions I’m making for Austin & I too!
Getting Out Our Holiday Books:
I’m probably most excited about this tradition since it went over so well this year. I love the idea of making something as simple as getting out books into a more special tradition that Piper can look back upon fondly. Piper heard me mention her Christmas books were in the attic and started asking about them a few weeks ago, so I knew she was going to be really happy to see them. I set up a special basket with all of her holiday books, cookies and a little mug of milk for her to enjoy when she woke up from her nap last week. She was SO excited. I plan to do this on December 1st in years to come and we are going to keep all of her holiday books out in the basket under the tree so we can pick one to read every night under the tree lights.
Online Shopping “Date Night”:
The next holiday tradition I’m excited to start this year is setting a date night in, complete with carry out (next year there will be a bottle of wine) for Austin and I to sit down and plan and order our holiday gifts online. This year we’ll be doing 90% of our shopping online given our little arrival that’s due to join us just a few weeks before Christmas. I love the idea of making online shopping something to look forward to vs. just haphazardly sending each other links for weeks and trying to cover all our bases. Barnes & Noble has an awesome Holiday Gift Guide online that helps you find the perfect gift for anyone on your list by curating everything into categories. It’s perfect if you have book lovers in the family like we do, but aren’t sure what exactly to get them. I personally love the best Gifts For Pre-schoolers and Sweet Gifts Bakers Crave! I’ve also been so intrigued by the Book Graph which is another great way to discover new books, based on books you’ve previously read. So if you know your sister loved Where’d Ya Go Bernadette — you can easily find other gifts she’s bound to love! I actually used this for myself to find a few books to put on my own wish list this year, it’s like having one of Barnes & Nobles booksellers with you at home if you can’t make it into the store for advice.
Book Trip!
We started our holiday season a little early this year by taking a trip to Barnes & Noble, just Piper and I so she could pick out a new Christmas book. I made this more exciting for her by giving her $1 that she carefully put in her little purse and proudly carried through the store. She was so excited. Despite making a bee-line for the toy section at first, she had so much fun looking at all of the holiday books and picking one to bring home for our collection. I plan to let her do this every year and then I’ll also gift her a new Christmas book on December 1st.
Such a cute post! There is always at least one book in Roman’s Christmas presents! Piper is adorable. Beautiful pictures!