This backpack contains 5 games – frisbee, catcherball, flip toss, bat and ball and horse shoe toss.  These are all games that are lots of fun to play in the garden and would be great to play on the beach.

Mr Moo has only had this backpack for a short while, but the whole family has already had lots of fun with these games. You can adapt them to everyone’s level, so for example, when I’m playing catcherball with Lollipop, we stand really close to each other and I cheer loudly each time she catches the ball, while my bouts with Mr McSpendy are a little more competitive and involve my ‘exuberant’ husband attempting elaborate behind-the-back and under-the-leg catches! Although he found it a little tricky at the beginning, Mr Moo quickly became an expert flip toss-erer (ok, I know that’s not a word but you know what I mean). We are still not amazing at horse shoe toss but I remain hopeful…..we’ll definitely be ready for the Rio 2016 Games!

At a recent playdate we used all of this equipment to create an ‘obstacle’ course race whereby the boys had to run to a number of stations and at each station they had to complete a challenge (throw the horseshoes, catch the ball etc) and it went down really well. It would be a great idea for a party game.

I love that all of this equipment fits into a lightweight and easily portable backpack.  It makes it both easy to bring with you and easy to tidy up. We’re off to the beach for a week at the start of July and this will definitely be coming with us. Easily worth £14 in my opinion.

Dobble is a wonderful game comprising 55 circular cards each with eight symbols on it. Each of the 55 cards has one symbol in common with every other card (so for the cards below, the common symbol is the dinosaur). There are lots of different symbols and they appear in different sizes on the various cards.  Dobble comes with instructions for five different games that you can play with the cards but the one that we love to play in our house is the most simple one. Essentially every player gets one card each and the remainder of the cards are in a central pile, each card from the central pile is turned over one at a time and each player has to find the symbol that their card has in common with the card that has been turned over. If you spot the common symbol first, you get to keep the card and the winner is the person who has the most cards at the end.

This simple game has provided literally hours of fun for us. Although Dobble is listed as being for ages 6+, Lollipop (who is almost 3) rocks at this game. Every adult who has sat down to play this game with her starts off trying to let her win, soon realises that she doesn’t need to be patronised and then ends up being humiliated as she whoops their ass! This, combined with the fact that Mr Moo and Lollipop both love playing it,  makes Dobble a really great game to play as a family. Plus, as the babas get older, we can move onto the more complicated games which adds to the game’s longevity. Because Dobble comes in a tim which about the same size as the average coaster, its the perfect game to take on hols with you.

Pictureka is also a great family game.

Like Dobble, Pictureka is an image (rather than word) based game which means that those who can’d read yet can still play. There are nine large picture tiles which are laid next to each other in a large square grid. Each tile contains a vast array of pencil-type drawings of all manner of objects ranging from the banal to the fantastical:

While you can play the game in a couple of different ways, we tend to just play a version which involves trying to be the first to find the image on the cards on one of the tiles. The person who finds it first keeps the card and the winner has the most cards at the end of the game. Finding the images is easier said than done, this game is wonderfully infuriating. Again, like Dobble, Pictureka is aimed at the 6+ age group, but both Mr Moo and Lollipop can more than hold their own so I wouldn’t worry about getting this game for younger chidren.

If you fancy a new board game, give either of these a try.

Unfortunately however, my obviously sub-standard fridge magnets are just not up to the job and I am forever picking up pictures of rainbows and paintings of dinosaurs that are being knocked to the floor every time that we reach for the milk. So this week, I’ve been looking out for solutions to this problem and it turns out that there are a lot of options out there. Here are a few ideas to get your own creative juices flowing as to how to display your children’s art:

A novel way to use clipboards.

Some magnetic Paint.

Putting art onto Canvas.

A new take on the washing line.

L’il DaVinci Dynamic Frames.

In the end, I’ve gone for the Li’l Davinci Art Cabinets – I got them for a great price from Irish based website birthdaygifts4children.

Enjoy designing your own Gallery!

]]> http://bababooty.com/2012/03/your-domestic-moma/feed/ 0 http://bababooty.com/2012/03/not-your-average-baby-gifts/ http://bababooty.com/2012/03/not-your-average-baby-gifts/#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:06:02 +0000 Paula http://bababooty.com/?p=2236 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….

We are in full weaning mode here at the minute, with Mr Mirth happily munching his way through a variety of fruit and vegetables. When shopping for some weaning bits and pieces, I came across the Beaba Mulit-Portion freezer trays and I’m a big fan.

These silicone freezer trays have been specially designed for refrigerating baby meals and I reckon they do a really great job. Each tray contains seven 60ml / 20z tubs which you can fill with whatever puree you have prepared for your baba, then you simply put on the lid and stick it into the freezer. Once the puree portions are frozen, you simply pop each one into a freezer bag and you have an easily accessible stash of baby food.

Freezer trays for baby food aren’t new but, for me, two things make this one so superior to the others that I have tried:

First, the frozen purees are so easy to get out of the tray – the silicone construction means each serving can be plunged out with very little effort and conveniently stored in a freezer bag.

Second, the portion sizes are much bigger than other trays I’ve tried. This means that at the start of weaning, you can make small portions but as your baba’s appetite grows, you can increase the size of the portions without having to use more and more trays.

At around €12-14 per tray, these are not cheap but I was lucky enough to find a 3 for 2 option so I can make enough purees for 21 days at a time. My freezer is currently chock full of freezer bags filled with various purees which saves me lots of time and makes my life so much easier, you can’t ask more than that from a piece of silicone !!

I am also confident that I will get use out out of these trays long after weaning, I can see myself using them to freeze things like left-over wine that can be used later for cooking, making individual desserts like panna cotta or even jelly or adding a few sticks and making some home-made  lollipops.

One such gift was given to Mr Mirth by a very good friend of mine Gayle, it is the most fantastic fabric book called ‘My Zoo Book‘.

Fabric Books are a definitely a baby’s friend, they can be grabbed easily, they can be chewed, they can be washed and also, very importantly, they don’t hurt when they bump you on the nose or land on your toe. My Zoo Book is a particularly lovely fabric book because in addition to all those features, it is beautifully made and is full of something that children universally love….animals. The story is an adaptation of the children’s classic Dear Zoo and each page depicts a different animal which is revealed when your baba lifts the flap.

The applique animals are really beautiful and the pages are very colourful and tactile.

This book and others in the range are made by Fun To Learn in Newry (Northern Ireland) and are sold via their website and also through www.early-learner.com . Unfortunately neither website (nor indeed my own attempts at photos above) do this book justice so you’ll just have to take my word for how lovely it is. I think it is a really lovely present and thanks to its enduring charm (not to mention its machine-washability!) I am confident that it will be a favourite in our house for some time to come.

Thanks Gayle !!

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:

And then we have been knocking them over!

These construction/destruction sessions have been enormous fun and cries of “again! again!” abound.

Four years ago, Santa brought a tiny Mr Moo (then 8 months old) a set of giant building blocks and they have provided hours of fun ever since. This year, Santa brought a second set of these colourful blocks for Mr Mirth meaning that our household is now the proud owner of 64 blocks.

These blocks are really super toys. They are bright and sturdy and yet really lightweight. This means that Mr Mirth does not get hurt if he has a little wobble  and lands on one (he is fairly good at sitting up now but sometimes he loses his balance and slumps over onto his toys) or if a tumbling block accidentally bumps a little person on its way to the floor. Also, their size means that the babas can actually get into the structures that they make, yesterday Lollipop was the princess inside the castle while her brave brother the knight defended the perimeter of their colourful fortress.

But by far, the build it up/knock it down game has been the most popular.

There is a downside though, these blocks are a bit on the expensive side with a set of 16 costing £63Stg and a set of 32 blocks costing £104Stg. While these prices are undoubtedly on the steep side, what I will say is that as toys go, these are keepers. Our original set has been played with continuously over the last four years and Mr Mirth is currently having as much fun with his new set as his almost-five-year-old brother and I am hopeful that they will be used long into the future.

In other news, I am seriously considering a new career in architecture…..check out this tower. Renzo Piano eat your heart out!!

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.