Katie Katie Parsons is the creator of Mumbling Mommy and is a freelance writer, editor and communications specialist. She works from her home office on the east coast of Florida. Most often she writes about life in a combined family of five children and what it's like being a full time work-from-home parent. Feel free to pitch guest post ideas or just drop her a line at [email protected].

As I’ve written before, family photos in our home are sort of a national holiday. We only do them once per year (occasionally twice), it takes weeks/months of preparation, I turn into a giant ball of stress and yet when I receive the finished product, I’m thrilled with how it all went (and I sign up to do it all again).

Our photographer gives us full digital rights to our photos, which is awesome but I admit that I often let the photos sit idly on discs or desktop folders and that many of them never see a picture frame or photo book on my coffee tables. I’m always looking for creative ways to display these photos, and though canvas prints are usually my go-to medium, they can be expensive and get a little monotonous.

I was approached to take a look at the products by Personalized Gift Express, including their photo coasters and customized photo Christmas ornaments. I picked out four of my favorite family photo shots for the coaster set and one of my favorites from my husband and my engagement shoot for the ornament and waited anxiously for them to come in the mail.

 

I absolutely LOVE the way they all turned out, and my kids have had a blast with the coasters — putting them in year order, back and forth, and talking about their favorite memories from each of the days the individual photos were taken. On a personal note, the coaster set sort of summed up the past nearly 4 years of my life just perfectly — one from my wedding day (when there were ONLY five of us), the next one featuring our newest baby addition, the next with all six of us in our most iconic family photo pose to date, and the last one with my very noticeable baby bump in the photo.

The clarity of the photos and quality of the coasters and ornament are really impressive — so much so that I don’t actually plan to set a hot cup of coffee on the coasters any time soon and I may find a year-round spot for the ornament. I definitely plan to return to the site to pick out more gifts, particularly with the Christmas season right around the corner.

The great news for everyone else is that Personalized Gift Express is giving away one of each of these items to a lucky reader. To enter, simply fill out the Rafflecopter info below. The drawing ends at 5 p.m. on Friday, November 14 EST. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Category: Featured

Tags: contest