Back-to-School Fun with Hallmark!

Save some room in your cart for some fun back to school "supplies"! Hallmark, on of my all-time favorite retailers, has three cute new products that will bring some smiles to the faces of even the most back-to-school resistant kids.


Text Bands are colorful, digital text bracelets give kids the opportunity to trade short messages on the playground. Compose a message of up to ten characters, then fist bump or high five with a friend and your messages will be digitally exchanged. Here's a look at Text Bands in action. This past week, Hallmark treated Chiara and a little friend of our family, Zoe, age 9, to a special concert featuring the teen Australian pop sensation Cody Simpson, to celebrate the launch text bands. Cody will be stopping in a few more spots on his Text Bands tour - but if you can't catch him live, check out his ode to summertime here.

Daniel and Zoe exchanging secret messages via Text Bands

Lunch Box Notes are a set of 50 tear-off notes with little thinking-about-you prompts that you can tuck in your child's lunchbox. This is a small but meaningful way to 'connect' with your kid as they're braving the middle school lunch room for the first time. They are sweet enough to bring a smile to any kid's face, i.e. "This lunch belongs to one AMAZING, FANTASTIC, INCREDIBLE, SUPER-IFIC KID! (That's you, in case you were wondering.)" and "I'm hugging you in my heart right now. I know, I know - I'm squishing you. I'll let go... in a minute."

Finally, there's Nugget, the Interactive Story Buddy who just arrived at our home along with the book, Nugget's First Day of School. Nugget arrived at just the right time for our family: my two (almost three-year-old!) is making the leap from a home daycare to a preschool when I go back to school this year. Just today we visited her new preschool, and we followed up with a reading of Nugget's First Day of School. My daughter is thrilled every time Nugget pops into our conversation (his voice is activated by key words from the storybook). I have a feeling that Nugget will be an important part of bedtime storytime every August for the next few years!

All products are available at your local Hallmark Gold Crown retailer. To find the store nearest you, visit stores.hallmark.com









Disclosure: Special thanks to Hallmark for sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own.