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The 2012 Smarty Holiday Gift Guide is sponsored by Toys & Co in Cotswold and Park Road Shopping Center. Find everything on Santa’s list at Toys & Co! And, they will wrap every gift BEAUTIFULLY and oh-so-expertly. They are the toy experts so they will help you source a gift if you are not sure what to get.

I have a 12 year old son and I feel pretty clued into what boys want but clueless when it comes to the 10-12 year old girl. Lucky for me, I have a girl who lives next door who fits the bill and she has friends!! Thet very graciously agreed to help me out and wrote “All I Want for Christmas”. Thank you to Whitney and Lawson. To see more recommendations, keep reading!

All I Want For Christmas…

What do ten-twelve year old girls want for Christmas?

We want electronics like the Nintendo 3DS XL, Windows 8 laptop, flat-screen TV’s, iPhones and iPods (of course, the new ones!), Kindle Fires and Nook Colors—(Sorry, let me catch my breath!), the mini iPad, the awesome Nikon Coolpix camera, and the newest Wii U.

But as we all want those gadgets, we also like crafts such as craft looms (to make headbands and potholders), duct tape, pottery stuff, and cool designer portfolio kits.

Smarties, it’s my honor to introduce you to Smarty Warrior, Erin Santos, Founder of the Isabella Santos Foundation in memory of her baby girl Isabella who is now in heaven. I just cannot imagine the level of pain Erin has endured over the years. My hope is that by sharing her story with you, together, we may all make a difference in fighting the pediatric cancer battle that is undeniably underfunded and often too little too late. Erin is a true warrior in my book. I’ve followed her Caring Bridge site for almost a year now and so wished I could have done something to change her outcome. She has strength and courage that I only hope to have if I ever walk in her shoes, which I pray each and every day that I never do. But as you know, cancer does not discriminate – it knows no bounds and can come into your life overnight.

So we ask you to share in Erin’s story this beautiful Saturday morning, halfway through Pediatric Cancer Awareness month. Make sure you visit the Isabella Santos Foundation site to learn more about how you can help.

Smarties, meet Erin Santos.

Have you ever had “a worst week ever”? A week so bad that you know you will be talking about it for years to come? I just had mine. Well, the worst so far. I hate to think of having another that tops it. I understand that bad things happen to people. Lets face it they have to. It can’t be all rainbows and cupcakes all the time. A little misery is good for the soul sometimes. It makes you appreciate your normal boring life.

Bad thing #1

My week started with my sweet Dad who was recently diagnosed with advanced lung cancer having to have emergency surgery. It was terrible, for me, for him for everyone. I haven’t really ever seen someone come out of surgery on a ventilator before. He looked so helpless and sick. I was scared to death. I aged ten years in one day. He got off the vent on that Monday, I sat with him and played Scrabble against him on his iPad. I actually had a chance of winning since he was on painkillers and kept falling asleep. My Dad is the smartest guy I have ever met and does the New York Times crossword in pen everyday. Finally I had a fighting chance. I got a call from my stepmother the next morning saying that he had crashed in the middle of the night and had to be put back on the Vent. Crap, scared all over again. Skip forward three days still on the vent. I continue to age rapidly and grey hairs start spurting up everywhere. He finally fights hard and can breath on his own. I exhale the breath I have been holding since he was admitted. This is a Friday, I think.

By Ted Claypoole
Co-author, Protecting Your Internet Identity: Are You Naked Online?

Introduction

Like the ocean, the Internet is an enormous place where predatory wildlife roams, but millions of children play every day. By vacationing at the beach and boating on the water, your child should enjoy and respect the ocean, but not fear it. Similarly, by dipping into the shallow ends of the Internet and taking chaperoned cruises through deeper content, your child should enjoy and respect the Internet, but not fear it.

Smarties, we need to rally our social media forces for budding local Charlotte tween artist, Zoe Fisher. Zoe found out this week that she is a finalist in the Vineyard Vines “Design a Tie for Dad” Contest. If she gets enough votes (the tie with the most votes on fb wins), her tie will be produced – how cool is that? The problem is the competition is TOUGH and they already have a competitive advantage – one tie has nearly 20,000 votes.

You know how much CSP {hearts} Shep & Ian with Vineyard Vines and all things local, especially the young community, so we’re going to rise to the occasion. Bring. It. On. “Start of a Dad’s Day” tie with 19,783 votes, we’re after Y-O-U (although we love your bacon & eggs design too, we just want to support our local ‘lil Smarty Pants:-)

Independent.
Happy.
Responsible.

We all want the same things for our children.
But…how do we get them there?

One thing we’re losing in our culture are rites of passage. It’s a shame because they play a major role in helping kids become independent, happy, responsible adults. All of us, our kids included, have become accustomed to receiving things effortlessly, electronically, and nearly instantly. The ascent to adulthood is marked less with meaningful rituals and more frequently with gadgetry. Happy 13th, now you can have a cell phone! Happy 16th, I got you an iPad!

A rite of passage marks the transition from one meaningful phase of life to the next. Ritualizing these moments for your children is how they internalize values and beliefs, rise to new levels of expectations, and acquire maturity, confidence, and pride in their ability.

Middle School is the ideal time to introduce a rite of passage and the very reason I started offering summer camps 9 years ago.

By Crissy Dopkowski

This year my family went camping over spring break. We had been waiting to go as a family until our youngest was a little older. This spring break seemed to be the perfect time to go with our son, now 8 and our daughter, now 4 1/2. We camped for two nights and it could not have been a more perfect getaway!

We headed out on the Friday morning before Easter to Hanging Rock State Park located in Stokes County, N.C. a little over 2 hours away, just passed Winston-Salem. We are not huge campers, so we had to get a few supplies, but luckily Bass Pro Shops at Concord Mills is on the way.

It’s here, Lilly Pulitzer SouthPark is opening her doors at 10am tomorrow morning and we cannot wait! And of course we have a giveaway exclusive to a CSP reader, just because we love all things pink & green and know you do too!

As you have read over the past week, we have been hanging with our Lilly friends as they transformed their store into a tropical island retreat. They like to call it “Lillify.”

CSP got cozy with the talent behind the walls of Lilly.

Smarties, I’m excited to introduce you to Smarty Mompreneur, Sarah Masci, founder of a drop of golden sun design studio. I met Sarah earlier this year and hired her on the spot to help us out with some of our facebook initiatives. She is super talented and extremely knowledgeable on all cutting edge aspects of social media. Not to mention she’s an awesome mom of three soon-to-be-four, sweet as pie and always working on the next latest and greatest. This Smarty Mama never sits still for a second!

One of Sarah’s latest fab projects is a custom iPhone case – how presh are these?!

Our first Smarty Mom of 2012 is a high-power working mama at Duke Energy! Gianna Manes is a mom I’ve known for five years when our oldest children were in kindergarten together. Gianna makes parenthood seem easy as I didn’t even realize she worked until two years after I met her! She seemed to make all the important school events over the years and did it with ease. So I just assumed she couldn’t have a “real” job, but nope, I couldn’t have been more wrong!