BabaBooty.comFab finds for funky tots

Looking over my most recent posts, I realised that it’s been a while since I posted about clothes. As all of the shops now have their Autumn/Winter 2010 collections in store, I thought that I would make up for my recent (but inadvertent) neglect of gorgeous children’s clothes by highlighting a few of my favourite items for the coming season. I’ve included a real cross section in terms of items and the shops where you can buy them in the hope that you will be inspired by something shown below or will click into a shop and find something else you fancy.

Hope you like…

It’s a sad indictment of our Summer holiday that I am writing about water proof clothing!

But here we are in County Kerry for our long awaited week of family fun and almost since the moment we arrived, it has not stopped raining. And I’m not talking about those light droplets of rain which can come as a welcome relief on balmy July afternoons……No ! I’m talking about biblical, torrential rain. The kind that makes you wonder whether you should just stop wasting time and build that ark!

I’m happy to say that the terrible weather has not stopped us enjoying ourselves. We’ve found lots to see and do. Armed with our waterproofs, a collection of umbrellas and a determined holiday spirit we are having a great time. Who knew that ice cream tastes just as good when its pouring?

But all this reliance on weather proof clothing meant that when I spotted a Hatley raincoat hanging outside a shop in Kenmare, I just had to take a closer look. Hatley make the most gorgeous matching raincoats, wellies and umbrellas. They team really funky children’s patterns with simple designs. Their raincoats are lightweight but breathable and comfy (they are lined with really soft terry cotton).They are very malleable too, so your baba can get on with their daily business of causing mayhem without their motions being restricted by the rigid fabric that’s used on a lot of raincoats.

I love the fact that Hatley have transformed a necessary piece of kit into something really interesting, I just adore the Later Aligator raincoat for boys and the Farmer Jill one for girls.

Later Alligator

Farmer Jill

Children love being out in the rain, now there’s no reason your baba can’t look fabulous when they are squelching in mud and splashing in puddles.

Price-wise, depending on the pattern you chose, they come in at somewhere between £22-£27 for the raincoats, £10-£20 for the wellies and around £12 for the umbrellas.

There’s a large selection on Amazon to chose from.

Every year I log on to Boden during their Summer Sale and pick up a few amazing bargains for the following year – in fact Lollipop was wearing a fab floral print dress to creche today which I picked up for a song this time last year. The sale doesn’t last long and the bargains are swiped up very quickly so don’t waste another minute – get that credit card out and go shopping.

Here are some of the lovely things they have for a fashionable young lady or gentleman’s Summer 2011 wardrobe:

£13

£8

£9

£8

£12

£8

£7

£9

£8

£13

Baby hair is a funny thing, it has a mind of its own – some babies are born with lots of hair only to lose it in the following months while others are born practically bald and stay that way until they are two or even three. Mr Moo was born with an even spread of beautifully soft baby hair which, over the course of his first three months, fell out in a pattern which mirrored the receding hair line of a middle aged man. By the time that he reached three months, it was as if someone had drawn a line over the top of is head, from one ear to the other and there was no hair in front of the line and lots of gorgeously soft baby hair behind it – he looked like some kind of miniature monk! Suffice to say, he wore a lot of hats in those early days. I’m happy to say that this issue corrected itself and he now has really lovely hair (yes, I am aware how biased that sounds…..)

Lollipop  was born with an abundance of the most wonderful black hair, she was so adorable! Thankfully, unlike her brother, she didn’t lose her hair but over the course of the last twelve months, those beautiful tresses have lightened in colour and have grown in an uneven sort of way. The hair on the top has grown a lot quicker than the hair on the sides. I can’t bring myself to cut her hair yet so, if left untamed, she can sometimes resemble an einstein-esque nutty professor! To make her look a little more respectable (well, I wouldn’t want her to be the victim of bullying in the ball-pool at creche) I have taken to taming the longer parts into pigtails – the resulting effect is ridicuously cute!!

So now its official, I’ve been bitten by the baby-hair-styling bug and while I’m aware that its uber-cheesey  I just can resist it!

We don’t have many pictures of my mother when she was young but when I think of mum as child, she’s always wearing an oversized bow in her hair. I’ve always loved these bows, they just seem to add so much personality (how gorgeous do these eight young ladies look?….though I will admit that the last little girl on the right does look a little scary!  ). So one day when I was scouring Etsy for some handmade treats and came across a shop called To Sweet Pea from Me, I knew that I needed to take a closer look.

This shop sells the most fabulous oversized bows for babies and little girls.

The bows are all made from really good quality ribbon and are made using alligator clips which are so easy and, importantly, pain free to get in an out of that very soft and delicate baby hair. I had previously bought some snap clips for Lollipop but the push that is required to snap them shut leaves her cross and me feeling guilty !

You can buy these bows on their own (which is how I prefer them) or with a matching hair-band. I couldn’t pick out just one colour so I chose the set of six bows made from 1 1/2 inch ribbon – the great thing about this option is that you get to chose the colours of the six bows and there are lots of fab shades to chose from…….

The 6 bows set me back $20.75 plus shipping. When you consider how beautiful they are and the fact that your little lady can wear them for years to come, they are not bad value. I use them to sweep Lollipop’s unruly tresses to one side and she looks almost obnoxiously cute. It’s a little bit of Shirley Temple in 2010.

Is it wrong to pass your very serious shoe obsession on to your innocent 11 month old daughter?? To be fair, some part of it must be genetic as, even without encouragement, Lollipop already shows signs of shoe-love….if there is a pair of shoes in the room, she’ll find them, grab them and drool (literally!) all over them. So I know she would approve of the subject of my most recent web browsing.

Lollipop has been standing up for quite some time now and her most favourite thing is to hold an available and willing hand and go for a walk. As the weather is getting better these days, we’ve been spending more and more time outdoors and while little baby tights are very cute, they are not the optimum outdoor footwear. So I’ve been looking for some little pre-walker type shoes for her that we can slip on when we are outside (when we are indoors, I think bare feet are best) to protect her little twinkle toes. I am a strong advocate of well fitting shoes so I would always recommend getting an expert to measure your child’s feet but once you know the right size there is an infinitude of fabulous little shoes to chose from. Here are a few that are making it hard for me to pick Lollipop’s first pair:

Every girl needs a special occasion dress and I’ve found the most gorgeous dresses on www.poppychildren.co.uk :

Ok, so at £47 to £50 each they are not for every day but if your little lady has somewhere special to go to ……

Plus, each dress comes with a story book which relates to the print on the fabric (the dresses pictured above come with a story about Poppy and her dog Fred going to the sea side) how cute is that?

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, I love Smafolk clothes and their new season collection has done nothing to change this. The new range is full of their usual bright colours and retro designs but also includes just about every animal you could think of. There are Swimming Swordfish, Purple Piggies, Bouncing Bunnies and even Squirting Elephants. So unleash a zoo into your baba’s wardrobe with these lovely creatures (all available from Peter and Jane):

So I’m supposed to be looking for a dress for myself for my brother’s wedding but I somehow manage to click onto Sky Sprout and the next thing you know I’ve spent half an hour looking at their gorgeous dresses. Unfortunately, they only go up to a size 7-8y so I can’t get one for myself but I would if I could !  Sky Sprout’s new Spring/Summer collection has lots of really funky prints and retro designs. They aren’t cheap (they range from £35 – 45) but if your little lady has somewhere special to go then maybe one of these little numbers might be just the ticket:

Now, it’s back to grown up dresses…..