I had been watching one of the myriad of Christmas cookery programmes that are on at the minute when I saw Nigella Lawson making gingerbread Christmas tree decorations with her children. The recipe seemed simple and used things that were already in my cupboard (meaning no frustrating mid-recipe shopping trips to source some random ingredient) so I decided to give it a go.

On Saturday afternoon I made a batch of the gingerbread dough and Mr Moo and I spent a really fun half hour or so rolling out the dough and cutting out various shapes. I baked the shapes for twenty minutes and then, when they had cooled, stowed them safely away from hungry little (and not so little!) mouths. On Sunday afternoon I whipped up a batch of white icing, filled my icing bag and tried to tap into my artistic side (I knew watching all those episodes of Ace of Cakes was not a waste of time…..). We gave Mr Moo and Lollipop a bowl of silver sugar balls each (of which approximately one in every five went onto a decorations, the remainder being sneaked into their grinning mouths) and we had a wonderful time decorating. My Mum also got involved, it turns out that she can get quite intricate with the piping bag.

Once the icing was dry, I threaded some thin red cord onto each decoration and we hung them on some small silver branches which we out into a vase.  While the decorations themselves won’t be winning any beauty contests, they taste great and we had lots of fun making them. The finished product looks really Christmassy and I am really proud of them actually! I think that this might just have to be a new Christmas tradition in our house.

Go on, give them a go !

These Lamaze toys are super, they have lots of tactile surfaces and vibrant fabrics to keep little hands busy and little minds stimulated. Plus they are a real go-anywhere toy as they can be clipped to a car seat, high chair, playmat etc,

‘Discovery Blocks’ are really lovely baby sized blocks, each one has a little surprise inside (a rattle, a mirror, a bell). The blocks are made of hard wood and finished with completely non-toxic, child-friendly paints and finishes.

I reckon it is some sort of Toy-law that every child must own a shape sorter. This Pintoy version is a classic.

If more elaborate shape sorters are more your baba’s style, then this Noah’s Ark from the Early Learning Centre might be a winner.

Bathtime is always more fun with some little friends to play with. With TubFun from Edushape your baba’s imagination can run wild creating lots of strange new animals and  turning your bathroom into a menagerie. These foam pieces  stick to the side of your bath or to your tiles during bathtime then can easily be removed and stowed away (so you don’t have to look at a chicken with an elephant’s head while you are having a soak in that well deserved bubble bath!).

I love pull along toys and I think that this dachshund from Brio is gorgeous. This design has truly stood the test of time  (he has been around since 1953!) When you pull him, his head moves from side to side , he wags his tail and wiggles his ears……how can you resist?

A toy that helps your baba with their spelling and reading ( that well known parental trick of education disguised as fun!)…..what’s not to love? This Melissa and Doug See & Spell is a winner in my books. 

Melissa and Doug are also the makers of this wooden slicing food. Lollipop has a set of these for her kitchen and she loves them. The wooden pieces are attached using velcro which can then be ‘sliced’ using the wooden knife creating a very satisfying crunching sound. Perfect for your budding little chef.

We now have the perfect space to put it, the den. We can make a place for it in there that we won’t paint in the future so all our little height marks can remain intact. Now all that remains is for me to choose the perfect one…..easier said than done, the range available is staggering. Here are a few of my personal favourites (click on the images to go to the relevant sites):

PS: I think these would make really great Christmas gifts for any children/families on your Christmas list.

I can hardly believe that my last post was five months ago, the time seems to have whizzed by. Back at the end of May, I was in the last couple of weeks of  my third pregnancy struggling with back pain while trying to pack up all our worldly possessions ready to move house as soon as our new baby arrived.

Since then we have packed in a lot and have ticked off quite a few significant family milestones;

• I gave birth to a fabulous and gorgeous baby boy who I fondly refer to as Little Mr Mirth (more about him later),
• We moved home to my parents house while we were waiting on our new house to be finished,
• Lollipop was potty trained (this was something she did with remarkable little assistance from anyone else!)
• Mr Moo started school (where did those four and a half years go??)
• Lollipop started a new creche, and
• We moved into our new dream house

Phew, even writing all of that down is exhausting. But I’m happy to say that we are now pretty well settled into our wonderful new life in the country with our very special new little man. Although the time has been hugely busy and I haven’t had a chance (or the technology…..there were a few long weeks there when we didn’t have internet!)  to write over the last couple of months, I have been making a mental list of all the great things that I have come across. So I’m really looking forward to getting back to blogging about clever, useful and beautiful baby/child related paraphernalia. It’s only as I write this that I realise quite how much I’ve missed it. So sit back, relax and enjoy (hopefully) all of the new posts that are coming your way…..

It was Mr Moo’s birthday five weeks ago and I’m ashamed to say that thank you cards for all of his lovely presents have still not been sent. But all of that is about to change now that I’ve bought this pack of cards. The pack contains 20 different card designs, each one needs to be coloured in by its sender. Broadly speaking there are about 10 boy-ish type designs and 10 girl-ish designs though there are a few which could work for either. Each card comes with a bright yellow envelope. I love the idea of being able to send out something easy and yet a little bit personal – I can’t seem to find time to do anything these days so the chances of finding time to hand make the thank-you cards was very slim and most of the ready made thank you cards seem so grown up so these are the perfect (and guilt-reducing) middle ground. A bargain at £5.25!

Find number two is John Emil Cymerman’s Endangered Animal Punch-Out Stencils:

Mr Moo loves animals and really enjoys drawing them. Unfortunately, obviously not wanting to exclude his parents, he generally insists that either Mr McSpendy or I draw him whatever farm animal, dinosaur or random reptile is his current favourite. Mr McSpendy generally makes a pretty decent attempt to replicate the requested creature but some of my attempts have been, ahem, shall we say less than accurate (“…no mammy, I said draw an elephant….what’s that?”). Anyway, this stencil book has improved things no end as now Mr Moo can draw pictures of lots of animals all by himself and if I am asked to produce an armadillo, I can do so with relative ease. The book comes with several pages of animal stencils, you simply have to push out the card in each stencil and you are ready to go. £4.69 is a cheap price to pay to recover your artistic dignity.

My final bargain is Animal Hands: Temporary Tattoos for Talking Hands

When I saw these, I immediately knew that they would be a hit in our house. They are skin stickers (or ‘tattoos’) in the design of various animals which are applied to a child’s hands. They are designed so that when your child moves his/her thumb and index finger, the animal’s mouth opens and closes. They are very easy to put on and are relatively waterproof so they last. You can remove them easily by rubbing them with skin oil. We have had lots of fun with the tiger and the giraffe so far and are looking forward to seeing what the shark and crocodile have to say. These are lots of fun and I think they would go down a storm at a birthday party. There are several different packs to chose from including Dino Hands, Farm Hands and Dragon Hands and at £3.99 a pack, they are a bargain.

The wipes are made by an Irish company called Irish Breeze and according to the official website, Water Wipes are the world’s purest baby wipe. They contain no preservatives and are 99.9% water. I’ve used a couple of packets of them now and while they will never replace cotton wool for me entirely, I have taken to using them for things like cleaning the baba’s hands and face after meals when we are out and I keep a stash in the car for those inevitable spillages-in-motion. Lollipop has very sensitive skin and I am happy to report that she has had no reaction to them. One enormous bonus for me is that they don’t have a smell (which makes sense given the fact that they are almost all water) as I hate putting perfumed things on delicate baby skin.  I have to admit, I like them !

I’ve bought my wipes in Boots (where I’ve availed of their 3 for 2 offers) but you can also buy them online from a couple of places which are listed here. Give them a shot and see what you think!

I would really love to have one of these silhouettes to capture Mr Moo and Lollipop in this unique way – in fact the only thing stopping me from getting one right now is that I feel that I should hang one for my little on-board tenant (i.e. baba number three who is due to arrive on 18 July) to arrive so that he or she can be part of this family masterpiece too. I reckon that this is a really  interesting way of preserving a memory. There are a couple of different options to chose from, including a version that incorporates the whole family. I particularly like these two:

All you need to do is email a photo of your baba’s profile to Happy Thought (they give you hints on how to take this photo) and then chose the silhouette that you want. You can either receive a print of your chosen image or, for a lower price, you can opt to have a high quality PDF of your image emailed to you so that you can print it yourself or bring it to your local print shop. Happy Thoughts will send you a proof of your image before it is finalised so you can be sure that you are happy with how it looks.  Prices start at $27 for the emailed PDF.

Lollipop has taken a little bit of a stretch recently and has grown out of lots her her tops so I’ve been looking around for some vibrant replacements. Here are a few of the ones that I found and really liked:

These combos from Katvig are match-o-rama (although the colours on screen look different, in reality they are identical) and I just love how Lollipop looks like an extra from The Wizard Of Oz when she wears them but if they are too matchy-matchy for you, have a look at these other colourful options:

When I came back to the real world and tried to get back on line, fate appeared to plot against me. The first time I turned on my lap-top after my Christmas hiatus, the battery started to swell. It got so big that it began to warp the keyboard  and eventually had to be removed. When I finally sorted that minor technical issue out, our broadband stopped working and has been down for the last week or so. While Mr McSpendy (still not totally recovered from his Man-flu by the way) sat smugly tapping away on his laptop using the ‘Dongle’ he has for work, I’ve been offline for what seems to be an age. On the plus side, I’ve had a series of much needed early nights. In any event, circumstances have meant that my little sojourn turned into a much longer break so I am delighted to be back !

One of my favourite things about Christmas is watching the old favourites that are shown on TV, everything from Its a Wonderful Life to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Mr Moo is at that stage where he takes on the emotions of those characters he is watching, so for example he laughs when those he is watching laugh but he also gets upset when a character gets worried, anxious or sad. As soon as we became aware of this, Mr McSpendy and I became even more careful about those few movies/tv programmes which he is allowed to watch. In this context, one thing that I have discovered is that my memory of certain movies is not always as accurate as it might be, for example I totally forgot about that scary scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Willie Wonka, Charlie et al go through the tunnel in the boat and I totally forgot about the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. So movies which I thought were totally appropriate for children, were in fact not ideal viewing for my little man. Also, in the case of Disney movies, I have realised that in order for the hero/heroine to reach that goal of ‘happy ever after’ they must go through periods of sadness or tribulations.  So I’ve been on the lookout for something a little cheerier.

Thankfully, I have re-discovered one movie which is totally perfect for Mr Moo. Mary Poppins truly is the most amazing children’s movie. It’s choc-full of wonderous adventures and imaginative songs. And the best bit….there aren’t any scary or sad bits!! Mr Moo caught the last twenty minutes of it when it was on over Christmas and was immediately hooked. He has been singing Chim Chimney Chim Chimney Chim Chim Cheree non-stop ever since. I have now bought the DVD and he is totally mesmerised each time he sees it. As an added bonus, it brings up  such lovely memories from my own childhood, I was astounded at how quickly the words from songs like ‘Feed the Birds’ and ‘ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ flooded back to me.

Although Lollipop isn’t a big fan of tv (not yet, anyway) she does adore music and stops in her tracks to dance as soon as she hears a song. In Mary Poppins, Dick Van Dyke and his motley crew of chimney sweeps sing and dance  to ‘Step in Time’ on the rooftops of London and every time that this song comes on, our living room floor is transformed into a dance floor as both babas laugh their heads off while they dance their little hearts out.    This is worth the price of the DVD every time. So if you are looking out for some diversion for your babas on these damp winter evenings, give Mary a try. As Ms Poppins herself would say: Spit Spot!

Since the babas arrived, I have tried to incorporate them in our Christmas mail-out, so when Mr Moo was 9 months old he appeared on our Christmas cards wearing a Santa hat (yes I know…predictable!) and in subsequent years both he and his sister have added their own inscriptions to our cards using their best crayolas. Every year at around this time, Mr McSpendy and I half joke about the prospect of doing an elaborate and uber-cheesey spoof Christmas family portrait for our Christmas cards, think a photographic version of something along the lines of these:

I’m thinking of a fireside scene with Mr McSpendy sitting in a wing back chair, holding a pipe and wearing a smoking jacket while I, in my best evening gown and full length gloves, clutch a silver tray adorned with a perfectly roasted turkey. In the foreground Mr Moo and Lollipop, dressed in his and hers elaborate sailor outfits, hold up their Christmas stockings while singing ‘Away in a Manger’, our perfectly decorated tree would just be seen in the background…… you get the picture.  We haven’t managed it so far but I’m not yet willing to give up on it – obviously it wouldn’t be the card to send to everyone, but there are those amongst our acquaintance who I know would ‘get’ and thoroughly enjoy these festive productions!

Until then, I will have to make do with more mainstream Christmas cards.  This year, the choice was made easy as our creche was involved with a project in conjunction with a fantastic charity for autistic children whereby each child draws a Christmas picture which gets transformed into a Christmas card. Parents can then opt to purchase boxes of these cards (complete with festively red envelope) to send out for Christmas. Lollipop is either an extraordinarily talented artist or she got a little assistance with her picture of a Christmas tree but it is adorable nonetheless. Mr Moo’s card depicts a tree and a huge Christmas present and he is immensely proud of it and I am really very happy to be able to send out something that is very personal and yet is also helping a worthy cause.

Homemade Christmas cards are also lovely to receive so in case the Yuletide spirit has got you in a arts-and-crafty-ish mood, I thought I would give you a little inspiration for what you, your baba and a little poster paint could do:

If you are not in the mood to get covered in PVA glue and glitter and want to buy your Christmas cards instead then here are a set of Christmas alphabet pop up cards from Robert Sabuda that I absolutely fell in love with:

The year that we sent these out, we got lots of lovely compliments on our choice of card. As an added bonus you also get to keep the festive tin that they come in, it’s a win win situation !

Whatever cards you decide to send this year, they are sure to delight their recipient and make you feel close to your friends and family in a way that a Yuletide ‘poke’ on Facebook or a festive text message could never achieve.