Recently, my fab friend K asked me to recommend a baby gift for a special new arrival. I was thrilled at the excuse to get googling and thought I would share a few of the things that I suggested. None of the below are your run of the mill gifts, but then, that’s why I like them….
Everyone loves to have a useful man about the house and I’ve just got myself five !
I had been looking around for some coat hooks for all of the kids’ coats and raingear and I cam across the Happy Hangers Hook set. I was immediately ‘hooked’ (sorry, couldn’t resist!) and ordered a set from www.stylishlife.co.uk where they are currently on sale for £18.72.
These hooks are so gorgeous that its almost a shame to cover them up with coats and scarves, hung on the wall in a row they look like a funky art installation. But they are as much about function as they are about form, they are really sturdy and because each limb can be used, each individual hook can hold lots of items. They come with the wall plugs and screws that you will need to install them.
If my five colourful men aren’t up your street then Stylish Life have a few other funky and unusual hook sets to chose from:
Now that we’ve finally moved into our ‘forever’ house I have been on the look out for a couple of things that I’ve always wanted to have in our home. One of these is a growth chart decal. I really love the idea of having a permanent record of how our babas are growing, something that they can look back at twenty years from now and marvel at how little they once were.
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 was having a look through the latest edition of LMNOP when I came across one of the loveliest ideas that I have seen in a long time – customised silhouettes of your babas! I really like the modern twist on a very old fashioned art that Happy Thought are offering:
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.
I’m still on my home decoration ideas buzz and this week have been looking at children’s duvet sets. As I may have, ahem, mentioned once or twice before, I hate branded things for children (if I see another Peppa Pig lunch box or Dora raincoat I may explode…EOne and Nickelodeon do not need the money!) I’d rather give my hard earned cash to designers who create vibrant fun designs that any baba would be happy to go to sleep in every night.
Ferm Living do some fab duvet sets for children, both in cot bed and single bed sizes. They are made from organic cotton, have zips rather than buttons (buttons, in my experience, inevitably open due to constant tossing and turning in the night) and they start at €53.50 for the cot bed size.:
The Little Baby Company has a lovely range of children’s bed linen. These clouds really caught my eye, the sets start at £35Stg for cot size and you can also get matching curtains:
I also really liked these sets by ISAK, Graziela Preiser and Lulu & Nat (price range £40Stg+) :
Last, but not least, I have to mention the remarkably good value range of children’s bed linen available at IKEA, this lot starts at €16.99 for single duvet sets:
Lollipop and I took a stroll in town today and I stumbled across a really gorgeous vibrantly coloured owl garland. Hopefully we will be moving home in a couple of months and so I’m constantly looking for decoration ideas. Seeing these padded little owls got me thinking that garlands are a really lovely way to add some colour and personality to a child’s bedroom. I haven’t been able to find the exact garland that I saw today but the following are some others I would seriously consider:
Given my owl fetish, I couldn’t resist also showing you these strigine treats:
We’re building a new house at the minute, our version of a dream family home. Our ‘new special house’ (as Mr Moo calls it) is about half-finished now and up to this point I have somehow managed not to engage in too much shopping for the new pad. But then, last weekend we visited the site and the roof had finally arrived and suddenly the building site started to feel like home – we really began to get a feel for the scale and proportion of each of the rooms. The baba’s bedrooms are big and bright and I couldn’t help thinking about how they might look when they are fully decorated. So I started looking at a few of my favourite decoration sites and one thing that really popped out at me was wallpaper.
I’m not normally a fan of wallpaper (perhaps its a throwback to all those ugly flock prints from my youth) but a couple of the designs out there have really caught my eye and have made me reconsider my views. I’m still not ready to commit to all four walls of wallpaper but I think I’m ready for a feature wall. Here are a few that that are tempting me…..
This gorgeous Blue Penguin design is by Isak
and costs £35 per roll.
The Owl feature wall-paper is also by Isak 
For this one, you upload the dimensions of your wall and they resize, print and send you out a set of sequential rolls of paper (perfectly sized for your room) along with hanging instructions. Your own bespoke feature wall will cost you £35 per roll. There are a several different designs to chose from.
The Animal Farm and Owls designs are by Ferm Living 
and both are €67 per roll
For all those young Noah’s out there check out the Two by Two design from Wallpaper Space 
which costs £45 per roll.
Lastly, I think that the Frames print by Graham & Brown is a very clever idea: 
The black and white pattern of this wallpaper is designed to be personalised by the insertion of pictures into the frames and the addition of colour to the frames themselves. It costs around £16.50 per roll and is perfect if you have a budding Picasso or Michelangelo on your hands or it you have a a baba who has a penchant for using their crayons or markers on your walls.
Get out that wallpaper paste !
Clean Up Clean Up Everybody Everywhere…..
Every child has a ton of small stuff that needs to be tidied away and stored – matchbox cars, dolls clothes, building blocks, train set pieces the list could go on and on. The obvious answer to this issue is a storage container of one kind or another. For the most part such containers are wicker, canvas or some kind of very plain plastic – not terribly inspiring. Well, here’s something to change all of that – check out these funky alternatives to the usual drab storage solutions:
These giant Lego storage boxes come in four different sizes: large (with 8 Lego knobs on), medium (with 4 Lego knobs on), small (with 2 Lego knobs on) and the smallest version with a single Lego knob. They come in lots of colours and can be stacked together just like real Lego. They look so great that they would be a funky addition to any playroom or baba’s bedroom. I’m going to get a few for Mr Moo’s bedroom, my only problem is deciding which size and colour combination to get.
Amusingly, you can also get a storage box in the shape of the celebrated Lego head – I’m not sure if I fancy the idea of a big yellow head sitting on a shelf in my house (those eyebrows have always kind of freaked me out…) but it is a design classic and a bit of fun. The boxes range from £22.99 for the largest box to £6.99 for the smallest. Say good bye to wicker baskets and canvas boxes for ever !
During my daily sojourn into the digital universe that is the world wide web I stumbled on www.helengordon.co.uk and what a find it was !
Helen Gordon is a designer based in the UK who designs and manufactures the most gorgeous things – Her range includes clean and classic designs, everything from pinafores to wallpaper, children’s aprons to tote bags and all in fantastic retro prints. According to Helen’s website, all of the products are made from the highest quality fabrics using ethical manufacturers.
Have a look at these delightful things:
I’m finding that owl print cushion very hard to resist……
The European version of Etsy, DaWanda has some fabulous shops which are choc full of handmade delights. One such shop is Alicia Cabello Design whose handmade textile goodies include these really cute personalised clothes line name garlands:
The individual pieces of laundry measure approximately 3.5 x 3inches each, the pegs are 1 inch long and the clothes line is 1 metre long so, sizewise, the finished product is not too unwieldy and could be hung on a bedroom door or on the wall over your baba’s bed. Each letter costs just €2.70 so unless you’ve given your baba a ridiculously long name (like Christabella-Evangeline or Massimiliano-Bartholomew) then this is a very cost effective piece of personalised decor! If you did name your baba Christabella-Evangeline and don’t have a wall or wallet big enough, don’t worry, you could just go for “My Room” instead.
There are three colour schemes to chose from (Jungle, Party and Pastel – in the order shown above) and although it doesn’t say so in the listing, I would expect that you can specify the clothing type and colour for each letter that you need.
The name garlands come in lovely gift boxes:
Given the presentation, personalisation and sheer novelty factor, I think that this would make a really special gift for any baba.
