BabaBooty.comFab finds for funky tots

In June, my long time friend and fellow mother Emma, with her husband and two gorgeous babas in tow, moved lock, stock and Phil & Teds to Toronto. Always being one to look on the bright side, I decided to focus on Emma’s emigration not as the loss of a dear friend but rather the dispatch of a Bababooty envoy who could scour the Americas for  the kind of clever and funky children’s paraphernalia that I love. When I said goodbye to Emma and wished her all the best on her wonderful new adventure, I made her promise to pass on all of her baba-related Canadian discoveries. True to her word, Emma has just sent me the details of Oliver’s Labels.

This company was founded by Debbe after she came up with an idea on how to keep her nephew Oliver from losing things. Oliver’s Labels produce some really fab labels (well with that name I’m sure you didn’t think they made lawnmowers….).

You can chose from Iron-on or sticky labels (Stick-eez) for clothing. There are also shoe labels, mini labels and bag tags to use on non-clothing items. I know what you are thinking, sure these labels are great but there are plenty of lovely labels out there. But what makes Oliver’s Labels different is their really clever Found-it tracking system.

The Found-it system connects you to your baba’s things via your email address. When ordering from Oliver’s Labels you are given the option of having a Found-it tracking code printed on your labels. If some one finds something owned by your baba that has one of these labels on it, they will be prompted to log on to the Oliver’s Labels website and enter the tracking code. The company then notifies you via the email address you provide at the time of purchase. As the company acts as an interface between you and the person who finds the item, nobody has to exchange personal information. How clever is that? Cue emotional reunion between your baba and his favourite lunchbox, best sweatshirt or most-loved teddy.

Children are always losing things and while Oliver’s Labels won’t guarantee that those items will be returned safely, it certainly substantially increases the odds. And the best bit? The addition of the Found-it tracking number to your label order is absolutely free !

The Iron-on and Stick-eez labels are $19.99 for 60 labels and they can be shipped internationally.

Already looking forward to the next instalment from my Canadian correspondent…..

This weekend, we have been mostly playing with bubbles. But not just the standard little bubbles that you blow using the bubble wands the size of a euro coin, no, we’ve been blowing simply enormous bubbles:

Above and below are rare glimpses of Mr McSpendy  as he works his magic in my parent’s garden on Monday.

To create these enormous bubbles Mr McSpendy is using a gadget called “The Bubble Thing”  by Klutz which is quite tricky to find but well worth the search. I’ve found it on a site called www.bubbleinc.co.uk (see half way down the page ‘Book and Thing’). Unfortunately, the site only caters for UK shipping but you can contact them for pricing for international shipping. The Book and Thing comes in at £10.99 plus shipping and it has more than earned its keep in our house – everyone who has seen us blow these giant bubbles has had to have a go. We were barely indoors for the whole weekend. The babas just loved the bubbles (it seems that bursting a life size bubble is a source of much joy) and the utter calm and relaxation that descends upon you when you blow these bubbles is amazing, I’m not kidding when I say that it could save you a few sessions of therapy !!

But you don’t need  The Bubble Thing to have fun and, in fact, its quite large and takes a bit of practice so Mr Moo preferred a slightly smaller option (see below):

In this picutre, Mr Moo is using one of the giant bubble wands that comes with the Bubble Bonkas pack. You can buy this pack from ebay and it costs just under £10 including shipping to Ireland. The pack includes two bubble wands (one round and one star shaped), a container for dipping the wand into the solution and a small bottle of solution. While you won’t be able to blow bubbles your baba could fit into (like you can with The Bubble Thing), the round wand that comes with this pack easily blows bubbles that are two feet wide or (like Mr Moo’s masterpiece above) a long bubble ‘tunnel’ that could be up to four or five feet long.

If you can’t get one of these bubble wands, you could make your own wand using some wire or, if you are strong, a wire coat hanger. Whatever you use to blow your bubbles, the key to success is the bubble solution that you use. The recipe below is the best one we’ve tried. The ingredients are not expensive and each batch will give you and your babas so much enjoyment.

12 cups of water

1 cup of corn starch (we used corn flour)

2 tablespoons of baking powder (NOT baking soda)

1 cup of washing up liquid (use Fairy or other good quality brand…the cheap stuff just won’t cut it)

I’m not sure why this odd combination of ingredients works, it just does.

Please give this a try, you will not regret it I promise !

I’m a little bit of a list freak, I just love to make them.  I use post-its, scraps of paper and even my phone to write down things that I need to remember (it appears that I suffer more than most from Baby Brain!!).  Loosing a list is a total nightmare so I absolutely love the idea of having something permanent and fabulous to write them on.  Blackboard panels are a really clever idea. They are wall stickers covered with a special surface which enables you to use them as a blackboard. Grab your chalk, write your list and then when you’re done, use a damp cloth to clear it all off so that you can start all over again.

Obviously though, these panels aren’t just for list making. Put one in your playroom or your baba’s bedroom, give your baba a fistful of chalk and let their imaginations run wild. At last, your walls are safe….no more wondering why that paint can said “wipeable” when it clearly isn’t or what possessed you to buy a permanent marker!!

As we are an animal obsessed household, the animal blackboard panels from Brume are perfect. They have a selection that Noah would be proud of. They are all fairly large (for example, the elephant is 90cm x 56cm.) and with the execption of the stag, they are all £29. The stag, which is the biggest of all, is £35.

If you fancy using your blackboard for writing something more thoughtful you could try or  

Irish weather!  One minute it’s snowing and Mr Moo is telling me “I’m really freeeeezing mammy” and the next there isn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun is actually shining ! Who knows what to wear? Well I’ve just discovered the KoziKidz outerwear range and dressing my babas for the changeable weather just got a heck of a lot easier.  Kozikidz jackets and fleeces are bright and funky but also soft and functional. I have just bought Mr Moo the grey  Reversible Fleece Jacket (see below) and it’s fab.

On one side there is polarfleece and on the other  there is woven nylon taslan so it is windproof as well as warm. Like lots of other KoziKidz stuff it has a thumbhole on the sleeve which means your baba can pull the sleeve down over their hand, push their thumb through the hole and have a mini glove….so cosy. I got it from Cozy Mole for £29.95.

I’ve also got my eye on the Softpile Fleece which comes in several different colours.

Check out the Kozikids website for the full range and for supplier details.

One weekend a few weeks ago, Mr Moo and my mum (Uber Granny) donned their aprons and  made some home made play dough. I’m not sure what made Uber Granny think of it or where she found the recipe but it was an enormous hit (and,as it happens, not just with Mr Moo!).

Together they just had so much fun making it and then playing with it. They used various kitchen implements to cut, mould and shape the dough, everything from pastry cutters to a garlic press. They even unearthed a kitchen implement which none of us recognised but which was just perfect for making a horse’s mane (we found out later that the implement in question was for cutting herbs but had never worked – it is now the official mane shaper!).

The fun was contagious as one minute the rest of us were pottering round the house doing mundane things like drying dishes and folding laundry, the next we were all hovering around the kitchen table  admiring Mr Moo’s elephant which, we all agreed, was in the cubist style, and Uber Granny’s modernist take on a giraffe.

Five minutes later we were all tapping into our artistic side and using blobs of dough to mould all kinds of creations. We quickly remembered why we’d loved this stuff so much as children. I’m ashamed to admit that at one point, Mr McSpendy and I got really competitive and started a mini-contest to see which of us could make the most creations  that Mr Moo could correctly identify.  There was much laughter as Mr Moo would shout out  ‘its a hippo’, ‘a bicycle’, ‘a whale’ etc  and we would be forced to admit that it was actually ‘a cat’, ‘a train’, ‘a lizard’ etc!’.  I’m not sure who ultimately won the game but it’s safe to say that neither of us missed our calling as sculptors!

Anyway, if you feel like going down memory lane and having some old school fun, here is the recipe:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup salt

Optional: Food colouring – a few drops totally transforms your play dough.

You can store the mixtue in an airtight bag in the fridge until your next artistic outburst.

So the memory card on your camera is maxed out, the hard drive on your pc is approaching meltdown stage, even the sim card on your phone is heaving you have so many photographs stored on there. We all have buckets of photographs stored on various media that we just don’t do anything with. Well, the Moo Sticker Book is a  really fun way of using some of those snaps.

You simply upload up to 90 photographs onto the Moo website and you get a pocket size book of 90 photo stickers.   The photographs themselves are remarkably good quality given their size, (about an inch square) and they come with a gloss finish. There are lots of good uses for these little pics.  I used some really sweet photos on thank you cards for gifts that we got for Lollipop. We also used some on Christmas cards that we sent out from the babas (they helped the recipients decipher Mr Moo’s elaborate signature).  Mr Moo loves them, he sometimes goes to creche with a mini photo of himself stuck to his chest and he is thrilled. Last week, he came home from creche in a different t-shirt than he had left the house in (a messy play spillage apparently) but his little sticker was in the exactly same position on the new t-shirt and boy was he proud of it. There are endless uses for these little photos,  gift tags, party bags, cards, invitations…..

At £4.99 a book, they won’t break the bank and your babas will love them.