As a mom to two little ones, especially a daughter about to begin first grade (say it isn’t so!), I’m really partial to educational products that are both fun and engaging.

School Zone is an award-winning publisher of children’s educational products that has been around for more than 25 years. Their line of products, from activity books to flash cards, are for not only for babies and preschoolers, but will grow with children up through sixth grade level.

My girls especially loved the new School Zone 3D Think & Blink numbers flash cards, which come in a nice, sturdy carrying case and are colorful and engaging.

School Zone’s new Math Readiness Sticker Workbook makes learning early math fun by incorporating that universal kid item of guaranteed fun: stickers. It helps teach skills like telling time, counting objects and money, matcing and comparing amounts, and learning basic addition and subtraction.

The Big Alphabet Workbook, for ages 3 to 5, has more than 300 pages of fun alphabet activities to help children learn letter recognition, beginning sounds, and basic writing skills.

School Zone also puts a fun twist on the traditional game of Go Fish with fun animal cards.

Their website also features a great online Kid Zone, with educational online games (which I love), stories and songs, and videos.

The holidays will be here before you know it, and School Zone products would be a wonderful suggestion for gift ideas.

Savvy Housewife School Zone quick picks for under $10:

My First World Atlas

Happy Faces Infant Mirror Cards

Magnetic Tins and Wooden Peg Puzzle Books for kids ages 3 and up

Weiman Products sent me a few more of their handy and easy to use cleaning wipes in two different formulas: wood and granite. I love the wood cleaning wipes and, as you can see, so does my 6-year-old. Huzzah!

Yes, sometimes being a savvy housewife means mastering the fine art of delegation.

The Weiman furniture wipes are great for my daughter to use because I don’t have to supervise her spraying a hard to manage cleaner. As far as the granite wipes, although I don’t have granite countertops (a woman can dream), they can be used on several surfaces. Out of all the Weiman handy cleaners in wipe form, however, my favorite is definitely the furniture wipes.

Weiman Furniture Wipes:

• Feature Weiman’s lemon oil furniture polish
• Clean dust, dirt, grime, and smoke residue
• Contain UVX-15 sunscreen, which protects wood from the damaging effects of the sun

Weiman Granite Wipes:

• Are great for everyday cleaning
• Remove grease and grime from sealed granite, marble, quartz, and most stone surfaces
• Are safe to use on a multitude of surfaces such as Corian, ceramic, chrome, fiberglass, auto interiors, laminated plastics, and patio furniture

Weiman is offering Savvy Housewife readers a prize pack of their cleaning wipes line, as well as products from their Perfect Planet line, eco-friendly cleaners with the EPA’s Design for the Environment seal of approval. To enter, simply visit the Weiman website, take a look around at their many great cleaning products, and come back to this post and leave a comment about which of their products you would find most useful. A random winner will be chosen from all eligible comments left by midnight Sunday, July 27.

Who says file folders and mousepads must be boring utilitarian and uninspiring?

Galison makes beautiful office supplies (and I do love me some purty office supplies) that will make your workspace sing, whether it’s a swank corner executive suite, a compact cubicle, or just the corner of your breakfast bar.

To celebrate the 4th anniversary of the Galison blog, they’re having a giveaway. Check out some of the desk bling:

Just visit the Galison blog giveaway post by July 31 to enter and be prepared for me to sulk if you win the Gali-swag, and I don’t.

Most little girls go through the horse and pony stage (boys, too, I should add!) If you’re lucky, they’re happy with the kind that don’t really require tack and a pasture. If you’re really lucky, they end up with so many colorful play horses and their 9 million accessories that you might as well build a special stall for them (insert sarcasm here.)

Savvy Housewife was recently asked to review a beautiful handpainted toy horse and poseable doll from Paradise Horses. My girls, especially my 6-year-old, are especially crazy about the horse and my daughter has been carrying hers to play at her grandmother’s every week.

These are not your ordinary plastic toy horses from your big box retailer. Paradise Toys feature a gorgeous line of very realistic toy model horses that are fully poseable (and good size at 10 inches tall) to encourage “serious horse play.” Their website also features a fun Paradise Horse Club for kids. Membership is free and the site features postcards, coloring pages, and more. I love toys that spark my girls’ imaginations!

Savvy Housewife is giving away a beautiful toy horse valued at $49.99 from Paradise Toys. To enter, simply visit their website, take a look around, and then come back and let me know the name of your favorite horse or pony at their site (my daughters have Rhythmical). A random winner will be chosen from all eligible comments left by midnight Thursday, July 24.

Paradise Toys is offering Savvy Housewife readers 20% off all orders at checkout with the promo code savvyparadise.

Tired, literally, of sleeping on a squeaky wheel of a mattress, Savvy Dad and I went on a mission Sunday afternoon—a mission to find, and bring home, a good quality mattress, at an affordable price.

After doing a search on the Internet for mattress companies, I was pleased to discover the SleepWell Mattress Outlet, which had an endorsement from money manager guru Dave Ramsey himself.

SleepWell touts famous names, minor flaws, and major savings and it did not disappoint. On the outside, the actual store wasn’t much to look at (low overhead, Savvy Dad reminded me), but as we walked in and surveyed the selection, we were very impressed. We were also trying to shop with a 3 and 6-year-old, so we had little time, and patience, to spare. We cut to the chase and got down to the business of lying down on the job…the job of finding the perfect mattress.

Savvy Dad quickly found a mattress to his liking. I liked it, too, but the selling point was when the salesperson told me it was a latex core mattress, which meant it was hypoallergenic. Savvy Dad has terrible allergy problems, so we were sold.

SleepWell Mattress Outlet specializes in selling quality factory-second mattresses from major bedding manufacturers, like Serta and Sealy. These could be overstocks, close-outs, freight damaged, mismatched, or pieces that are blemished or have stitching flaws.

We bought a gorgeous Sealy latex core queen size mattress with no detectable flaws at all. We paid $900 for it, which was half of the original $1,800 price. It is worth every penny and the salesperson told us it should last 15 to 20 years. It’s so comfortable, it’s like sleeping on a giant soft, yet firm, marshmallow. It’s such an upgrade from our sad, sagging excuse of a mattress that was well past it’s prime after a decade, that I felt like I was sleeping in a luxury hotel suite, and not our master bedroom.

As you can see, Savvy Dad doesn’t like the new mattress. Ignore the gift bag stash and digital scales peeking out from under the bed.

So, Savvy Housewife gives SleepWell Mattress Outlet a thumbs up. Visit their website to see if there is a location near you.

Sobering thought while our old mattress and box springs were being hauled off by a delivery service, independent of SleepWell: “Our girls were conceived on that mattress!” God speed old girl, God speed.

I can think of a hundred more things I’d rather do than scrub the bathtub. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it and around my house that someone would be moi. (Savvy Dad does 75 percent of the cooking, so I can’t complain.)

Thanks to Mom Central I had the chance to review the new Scrubbing Bubbles Action Scrubber from SC Johnson, which makes several household cleaning brands we have all grown up with, from Windex to Pledge. The scrubber is actually made from a heavy duty foam type substance with an easy-to-grip handle. The back of the cleaning pads attach to the scrubber. Each pad contains tiny scrubbing fibers and concentrated Scrubbing Bubbles® formula to cut through soap scum on tile, tub and shower surfaces, and even shower doors. For those hard to reach corners and tight spots, you can detach the scrubbing pad. I actually used mine to wipe out the bathroom sink once I’d finished cleaning the shower and tub.

We have one shower slash tub in our house (yes you read that right…apparently homeowners in 1968 didn’t really want the master bath treatment) so it gets a lot of use which equals a lot of soap scum. I really liked the fact that I could toss the scrubbing pad once I was done with it. No sponge or scrub brush to sit and breed unwanted microscopic bath buddies.

So, while the new Scrubbing Bubbles Action Scrubber doesn’t make the physical act of scrubbing the tub and shower fun, it does make it quick and easy, which is a bonus in my busy mom handbook.

Click here for a coupon for $2.75 off your in-store purchase of the Scrubbing Bubbles Action Scrubber, which is a great deal since it retails for around $5.

I love WallCandy Arts and I wasn’t surprised when I found out that two moms founded the company. It’s a fabulous product and, frankly, one of those I wish I’d thought of first.

WallCandy Arts is a fun line of reusable wall stickers and wall art for an innovative, no fuss way to decorate every room in your house. The sets come in a faux “paint can” and feature easy peel and stick application. Once installed, WallCandy can be effortlessly rearranged or removed and used again without marring your walls. As their website states, “WallCandy is savvy design for the design savvy.”

I let my girls loose in their bedrooms with several sheets from the Flutterflies collection (which comes with 130 reusable vinyl butterflies in pink, green, blue, and brown and retails for $50) and they went wild. First of all, being a tad of a control freak, this was tough for me to just walk away and let them have at it with their butterflies. I just told them they could put them on the walls above their beds. They loved them. Both my girls are crazy about butterflies (Barbie Mariposa anyone?) and they were practically jumping up and down over their new butterfly wall art. I also liked the fact that we could easily camoflauge a few nail holes and minor wall dings with our new tres cute butterflies.

Wallcandy art is safe for walls and a fun way to add a punch of color to your child’s room, playroom, bathroom, wherever.

Check out their website for the Decorate a Room section and go crazy decorating your own virtual room.

My other favorites from Wallcandy Arts are the new swank Rococo chalkboard design (how fun would that be in a utility room or mudroom for messages) and DottiLicious.

And now for the finished masterpieces (so easy a 6 and 3-year-old did it!):

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