Mommy Beta Gift Guide: Stocking Stuffers

We’ve shared our holiday gift guide for Mommies, Daddies, Babies, Toddlers, and our favorite Gadgets. Now check out some of our ideas for your LO’s stocking. 

Hair Accessories: For your little girl you can order hair bows and clips online at Funny Girl. They also have super cute hats with big flowers on them. You can also find them on Amazon. They range from about $13 - $20. Reese lived in hats when she was a baby. 

Finger Paints: I bought Reese Crayola Washable Fingerpaints. This might be one of Reese’s eight Hanukkah gifts and not a stocking stuffer. These cost about $7.

Electric Toothbrush: I think most of the MommyBeta babies are using electric toothbrushes. Baby Mo uses aThomas the Train Spinbrush and Reese uses a Cinderella one made by Oral-B.  Tell them that Santa likes clean teeth! You can get them at Target for around $5.

Stickers: Nathalee uses them on plane rides to entertain Nic. Since then, I’ve introduced them to Reese and she loves sticking them on her body

Play Dough: Sure, you can buy play dough. But why buy when you can make? Natali made Baby Mo his very own play dough.

Baby Food: We like Peter Rabbit Organics but there are many great companies who make something similar. Reese is a huge fan of these pouches. Or you can try Organic Puffs or another snack your child loves. 

Still need more ideas? What about a little ball, bells, a rubber ducky, flash cards, Animalz, temporary hand tattoos, cell phone or keys! 

What are you putting in your child’s stocking?

For Goodness Sakes Turn Those Cameras!!!

Okay, I can take it no longer! I don't mean to call out my fellow MommyBetas but I think we can all learn a lesson from videos like this or this.

These are the cutest videos ever but the quality suffers because they were shot with iPhone cameras shooting in portrait mode rather than landscape mode. Fellow mommies, don't do that! Turn those cameras on their side! 

I think I've already scolded Jennifer on this so she is shooting correctly and most of Alex's videos are shot landcape so Nathalee is the biggest offender and, perusing YouTube recently, so are most of you! I admit, I did it at first too before my husband gave me a lecture so now I am going to pass that lecture on to all of you in hopes of saving your childrens' precious home movies! 

Why does this matter? Allow me to explain. 

The iPhone 4 and most Android phones have cameras that shoot HD video at 720p or higher. That means crystal clear videos - if you use them correctly. This is great for capturing spur of the moment cuteness but even better when you really use it to its full potential. You paid enough - might as well get your money's worth. 

When you shoot these videos in portrait mode, you do not get the best HD footage. When uploading the videos in portrait mode, the video is less clear than it should be and can be hard to watch because your video player is forced to put black bars along the side of the video player so the image is compressed, even on a computer screen. And if you decide to play your videos on a wide-screen TV, they look even worse. The video camera in your phone is meant to be used to shoot video in 16X9 ratio, which is the same ratio as your television and computer screen. 

Now that Apple offers AirPlay, we play the videos we shoot on our iPhones on our TV screens a lot. When family comes over and we want to share Baby Mo's videos, we play them through Apple TV. If we had been shooting these in portrait mode, they wouldn't look very good on the big screen. And if I want to make a montage of any sort, it helps to have the videos in the same aspect as most photos.

The ONLY caveat about shooting this way is that you can cover up the microphone with your fingers while holding the phone sideways, which muffles the audio. We have made that mistake a time or two and it can be a bummer. Keep your fingers off of the microphone slits along the bottom, or wherever they may be on your phone. 

So moms and dads everywhere, make a note to yourself: The next time your child is doing something extra cute, turn that camera to landscape mode! You'll be glad that you did! 

/Lecturey Mommy