Our advertiser Stephanie Mohan of Creative Portraiture is offering an annual Spring Portrait Special for 2010! Between Sunday, February 28 and Saturday, March 6, she's offering a special $50 sitting fee and 50% off print prices (if ordered by March 20).

Also, if you refer a new client who books a sitting, you are eligible for a drawing for a free sitting and 11x14 print, a $450 value.

For more information, to see more examples of her work or to book a 20-minute appointment call Stephanie at (415) 454-2102 or visit www.creativeportraiture.com.

We think that Stephanie does some of the nicest family photography out there, so take a look.

Over the past few weeks we've noticed that our 4-year-old seems to have outgrown her car seat. She still fits it, but the straps are getting tighter and harder to adjust, and as a fairly tall kid she's looking a little silly in the car seat.

We've been using Britax Marathon car seats for both children. They're expensive, but we definitely got our money's worth out of them, and they can be used for kids up to 65 pounds. They're also easy to install, which is a big plus, given that it's estimated that 80–90% of all car seats are improperly installed, which definitely has an impact on their ability to a child safe in a collision.

Marin mom and entrepreneur Marjun Biernath looked back to her native Germany when trying to find a business niche here in the US. She imports unique, handmade, and educational Kumquats puppets from Europe to sell to lucky families in both the Bay Area and throughout the country.

We asked Marjun to answer a few questions about herself, her family, her business, and Kumquats. You can learn more about Marjun and the complete line of Kumquats puppets by visiting www.kumquats-usa.com.

Fort Point's 2011 Civil War Living History Day takes place Saturday, January 29. More details here.

Directly underneath the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge sits one of the Bay Area's most evocative and exciting attractions: Fort Point. Fort Point was constructed on the northern tip of San Francisco in the 1850s to guard the entrance to the Golden Gate. It's the only 19th-century masonry fort located east of the Mississippi, and it's been run by the National Park Service as a National Monument since 1970. It's always well worth an outing, especially if a special event such as this weekend's Civil War Living History Days happens to be taking place.

Familar to fans of the movie Vertigo (it's shown in the scene where Jimmy Stewart fishes Kim Novak out of the Bay), Fort Point is sits right underneath the southern end of the bridge and commands a superlative view of the Golden Gate and San Francisco Bay. Despite the traffic whizzing by overhead, it's not hard to imagine what this place would have been like a century and half ago when it was an active military intallation, and of course this stretch of the imagination is made easier by the living historians on hand at the fort this weekend.