My 6 year old son Mac is OBSESSED with sports.  When he was younger, we couldn’t get him to participate in any kind of sport, but over last summer, a switch was flipped and he is ALL SPORTS all the time.  Fall was all about Football – he preferred front yard football with his Dad to playing on the organized flag football team (which tends to be a little on the serious side).

Every weekend, there is a passel of kids who hang out at our house playing football (and waiting for my husband to play with them).   Every night, he and my husband would practice “patterns” in our living room – much to my chagrin – but, so far nothing has been broken.

He’s more interested in doing than learning, so the only way we could get him really interested in math was talking about sports scores on an NFL app we have – that really kept his attention and he’d be happy to share with you how many teams won more than 8 games this year.

Now that the college football season is over and the NFL season is waiting for its swan song next week, his attention has turned to basketball.  High School basketball (he got to inspect the ball at our local HS game last week), college basketball and the NBA.  He doesn’t really have a favorite team yet – he waffles between the 76ers, who is his Dad’s favorite team, the NY Knicks, since we live in New York, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Thunder because his favorite current player is Kevin Durant and the Chicago Bulls because that’s where Michael Jordan played.

Mac is never at a loss for words and is able to talk about teams, plays, dunks and everything in between and always wants to know who your favorite player is, who had the best dunk and what was the best play of the game – all while re-enacting each one.  His enthusiasm is charming and I hope he doesn’t lose it.

He got really excited last week when he wandered in my office and saw me working on an email template for the Thunder – I think it’s the only time that my job has ever resonated with him – but he was pumped that I was designing email skins for the NBA.  Now he wants to start sending email with his own personalized NBA email backgrounds – maybe I can use this to help out with his spelling!

Jewels are in this year with Emerald being selected as the color of the year by Pantone.   “Lively. Radiant. Lush… A color of elegance and beauty that enhances our sense of well-being, balance and harmony.” Is how Pantone describes this year’s selection.

Pantone is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), which is a proprietary color space used primarily in the printing industry.  They are also the folks who forecast color for the fashion and interiors industry and decide what color is the “IT” color every year.  According to Wikipedia, twice a year Pantone hosts a secret meeting of representatives from various nations’ color standards groups. After two days of presentations and debate, they choose a color for the following year and this year it’s emerald – the color of the year seems to coordinate with the general sentiment of what’s happening in the world – in 2011, Honeysuckle was chosen because it was “Uplifting” and in 2012, Tangerine Tango was the chosen because it was “Energetic” – apparently, we need a little harmony in our lives this year.

We decided to jump on the Emerald bandwagon and created some new email stationery designs in Emerald – your email needs to be on color target, too, right?

Emerald Leopard Print Email Stationery, $2.99 for an annual subscription

Carriage Trade Email Stationery by Hannah Nation Seabrook of Gadabout, only $2.99 for an annual subscription

Emerald Green Chevron Email Stationery, $2.99 for an annual subscription

Holiday Email Stationery designed by Pickett’s Press for MeebleMail.com

I don’t know about you, but holiday spending really stresses me out. With gifts for our teachers, caregivers, tips at the salon, tips for the postman, sanitation workers and even the crossing guard, I feel like a human ATM. I so appreciate the work that service people do during the year and want to thank them, so I am looking for some ways to reduce costs in other areas. Following are some ideas and things we do to curb the holiday cash free for all.

1. “Mean Santa” or a Holiday Gift Exchange. Each year we get together with my husband’s extended family (30+ with kids included). It would be outrageously expensive to buy or even make gifts for the entire family, so instead all the adults play a game that we call “Mean Santa”. Each adult buys a gift of about $100 in value. We put all the wrapped gifts in a pile and then choose a number. The person who drew #1 selects a gift, then #2 can either steal #1′s gift or select a new one. If #1′s gift is stolen, then #1 gets to choose a new gift and so on. It’s such a fun game and everyone ends up getting something they really want (even if it’s what they bought). So much more entertaining than just opening a present from under the tree.

For the kids, we buy one present of about $25 in value that is appropriate for our kids’ age group and they do a gift swap – without the stealing, of course.

2. E-Stationery & Cards – We send holiday cards via email on email stationery from MeebleMail.com. Sending paper cards can cost several hundred dollars or more depending on the style and quality of card you buy, so instead we are sending email cards this year. We’ll send a holiday update letter along with some photos of our family throughout the year. The cost for MeebleMail email stationery ranges from free to only $2.99 for a one year subscription of unlimited use.

3. Set a budget/gift limit. Since we often travel for the holidays, we set a limit on the number of gifts our kids get. Each year, they get a maximum of 3 gifts from us (or Santa) and we also set a price limit. It helps with clutter and the pocket book!

4. Potluck. Potluck sounds a bit boring, but instead of taking on the burden of the holiday meals and parties – we all sign up to bring different dishes so that everyone shares in the costs of the Holiday meal instead of just one family.

5. Shop the Sales, but don’t get sucked in. I personally hate crowds, so Black Friday isn’t for me, but Cyber Monday is another story. I stick to my list and don’t let myself get tempted by seemingly great deals for things we really don’t need. I also do comparisons on who has the best deal. For instance one toy website was offering 40% (with a limit of a $40 discount) and another site offered $25 off the same item – though the 40% sounded like a better deal, their price was much higher, so the price ended up coming out the same as the site with the “lower deal”.