Have precious baby or kid pictures you’re just dying to share? Why keep them stashed away in an album that you’ll inevitably forget at home? Wear them literally on your sleeve (as a bracelet) or as a charming necklace. We mean that literally too. The mini-picture frame charms are the key to this original jewelry concept by Dallas-area artisan and longtime art teacher Shelly Harris. You order the necklace or bracelet or keychain with however many charms you need to feature your family (you can leave your husband out) and specify a color scheme. She develops your totally custom piece from stones and beads and you pop in the pictures. They’re romantic and fun and great for gifts! See and order them at: picturethisandpicturethat.com.

My husband hates it when I spend too much money dressing the dog. So even though the holidays are coming, I try to stick to casual wear for our Lou. I like this t-shirt from PetsMart because it’s simple and yet sporting. The color is vivid and will look great on a white, brown or red mutt. It could be a nice stocking stuffer. I remember the year that Santa forgot Lou until the last minute! That wouldn’t have played well with the 5-year-old — daughter that is — who expected Santa to bring the full complement of stocking treats. Thanks be to Safeway, the grocery store was open late that Christmas Eve!

We don’t always find our kids’ favorite toys under Amazon’s “hot toys” list. But this year one is so hot, it’s flaming right off the webpage. It’s the new Nintendogs game for the Nintendo DS, that itty-bitty portable game player you see kids’ noses stuck to in restaurants and store. We wanted Nintendogs so much, we spent our allowance on it before Christmas. But alas, it is a cute, if only modestly educational game. You pick your dog, and then by teaching it tricks and successfully playing related games, you can buy another dog. Pretty soon you end up with a puppy mill! Just kidding. No one gets killed in this video pursuit. So it gets my seal of approval. And the puppies are ahh..so adorable!

Drum sets are definitely something you don’t want to have to get — unless the kid is serious. All that noise is either a path to musical attainment, or it’s just ALL THAT NOISE. So we found this MiJam toy intriguing. You can plug these drum sticks into an MP3 player or iPod and jam with the music. It has different settings so you can sound like a snare drum, cymbals etc. In other words, for $25 your child can experiment with playing the drums, without shaking the house down. There’s also a MiJam guitar and MiJam Mixer. We don’t think these get that loud….KB Toys.com sells em. Beware one customer got a bum drum set. Others liked ‘em.