… to enter our Lilikoi Lane Giveaway to win a fabulous personalized T-shirt for your child! All the details can be found on the original post.
Good luck!
Did you know that outdoor clothing company Patagonia also has a line of kid’s clothing for babies, toddlers, and children? Neither did I, until Gramma started gifting our children the coolest kiddie outerwear, including nifty vests and comfy cozy winter coats.
One of our favourites from a previous season is the Kids’ Puffer Vest. Our son owns a Puffer Vest like the one above except in two tones of blue, and it is a great item for layering under a winter coat or wearing on top of a sweater in the spring and fall. Maybe it’s the prairie girl in me, but I simply adore this vest’s ’70’s retro cowboy look, and I can definitely attest to the durability of this item for little cowboys and cowgirls. Made from 100% all-recycled polyester with a water repellent finish, this vest is tear-resistant. Yup, tear-resistant!
But even over the durability factor of this clothing line, the thing I love most about is that almost all of Patagonia’s outerwear is REVERSIBLE! Parents know how brilliant this feature is. I can’t take my son anywhere without him somehow finding dirt or food or whatever to smear all over himself, but et voila! I simply reverse his coat, vest, etc and problem solved. Excellent.
Some of our other favourite Patagonia gear includes winter coats and pants, but since we’re heading into spring at the moment I should let you know that Patagonia makes some darn cool shirts like the Baby Circus T-Shirt and the Baby Tag You’re It T-Shirt for children aged three months to three years. And although Patagonia’s Kids spring collection (for children older than three years) is pretty cool, too, their cutest clothes are definitely those in the Baby & Toddlers collection.
Patagonia’s pricing may give you heart palpitations, but if you are into Earth friendly clothing made out organic cotton, merino wool, recycled polyester, and chlorine-free wool (just to name a few), then the cost of Patagonia’s clothing may be justifiable to you. Shop on-line directly from Patagonia or head to your local outdoor store to pick up some cool duds for your baby, toddler, or child (or introduce the Grandparents to this cool line!).
My husband and I LOVE food. Even more specifically, we love varied and exotic foods from all over the world. Italian, Greek, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, French, Chinese – our love for food is as strong as our love of travel, so we would hate it if our child turned out to be a fussy eater.
One of the things I was unsure about is how to introduce baby to things like spices as well as which ones I should start with. When we were on our Babymoon, I found this Cooking For Baby cookbook at William Sonoma. We’ve only just started using it, but I love it. It starts with simple purees for babies aged six months, but by seven months things start to get interesting with thicker foods like green beans and mint and asparagus “Risotto”, moving on to things like minced pork and pears, baby’s curry, and rice noodle primavera. Finally, it includes real family-friendly meals like corn and salmon chowder, cranberry orange scones, aromatic couscous lemon-mint chicken, and hearty beef stew.
There are more than 80 very easy recipes in the book which also has beautiful photos and tons of information on everything from starting solids to different child-friendly herbs and spices. I love how tasty and healthy each recipe is as well as how varied the tastes are, but most of all I love how easy it is to make Little Miss healthy foods that expand her palate and make food exciting.
Cooking for Baby is available in soft cover from Amazon or in hardcover from William Sonoma, and it makes a great gift!
A HUGE thanks to everyone who entered our My Quotable Kid journal giveaway by submitting funny kid quotes and musings. We had a great time reading them, and in case you missed this one, check out the entries here (my favourites: the kid who’s bum ‘threw up’ and the one wanting to know where the door out was when looking at a picture of her mother pregnant with her).
The winners (and choosing them was hard) of this giveaway are: Danielle, Tracy, Grace, Kristin, and Jennifer.
Congratulations ladies! We know you will enjoy this book as much as we do! I used my journal yesterday when I told my son to tell his Papa what he’d had for breakfast. He said, “I had a Cheerio, then a Cheerio, then a Cheerio, then a cranberry, then a Cheerio, then some milk …” Yah. Thanks for the play by play, kid. At least I have it down on paper, right?
Crystal Allen, the Canadian creator of on-line shop Lilikoi Lane, approached us about trying one of her gorgeous handmade shirts. Once I knew that I was selected as the lucky Spilt Milk Mom to try out a shirt, I realized that I had my work cut out for me – Lilkoi Lane has so many unique and adorable applique patterns and so many gorgeous and funky fabrics to chose from. After chatting with Crystal, I decided to try out one of her latest creations: Alphabet Shirts!
Designing Maddie’s shirt (shown above) was an easy three step process:
When Maddie’s shirt arrived at our house, it was a professionally wrapped masterpiece, including a really sweet handwritten note from Crystal. The applique and the stitching was perfect (and trust me, as a perfectionist I know perfect!). The shirt was pre-washed and ready to wear, a definite bonus because Maddie was so excited to put it on, right then and there! I think that the greatest thing about Lilikoi Lane shirts is that you can involve your child in picking out the appliques and patterns. And then, when your child’s shirt arrives, they can see the end result of their creation!
Dealing with Lilikoi Lane was an absolute pleasure, and you can tell that Crystal loves what she does and is incredibly talented at it. The shirts are created in Canada, and are so reasonably priced (approximately $10 – $15 each for the basic appliques and the alphabet shirts, and $30 each for Lilikoi Lane’s new monster shirts!). The letter applique shirts would make a great birthday gift for that ‘kid who has everything’.
*****************************************************************************************************************************
Lilikoi Lane has offered one of their amazing shirts for a giveaway so that one lucky Spilt Milk Moms reader can share in the fun! The lucky winner will get to design their own Alphabet shirt shirt or can design their own shirt from this list!
You can enter this giveaway in three ways:
This giveaway ends at midnight PST on Tuesday, March 9, 2010. The winner will be selected using Random.org. All entrants must be residents of Canada or the US.
Don’t forget to visit us every day for a new chance to win! Good luck!
*****************************************************************************************************************************
In case you’re not the lucky winner of our Lilikoi Lane Giveaway, Lilikoi Lane is offering a discount on their products for all Spilt Milk Mom readers. Now through the end of March, simply enter code SM10 to receive 10% off of any order, OR if you spend over $25, enter the code SM15 to received 15% off your order from the Lilikoi Lane Website .
Wow! Thanks Lilikoi Lane!!
Quick – what is 8×4?
If you even have to think about this question for longer than a few seconds, then you should brush up your brain power with Nintendo’s Brain Age series for the Nintendo DS handheld game system. And if you are pregnant or post partum, then you really should put a Nintendo DS and Brain Age 1 and 2 on your wish list (or WishPot list).
Ever heard of baby brain or mommy brain? These are terms used to describe the memory impairment suffered by new mothers, which can supposedly affect you for up to a year following the birth of your child. In my case, memory impairment started early, a few months before my son Oliver was even born. I’d be standing in the grocery store, pregnant and looking confused, wondering what the heck I was doing in aisle three. Or I’d be at the office working on something really important, but unable to remember how to put a sentence together. It got even worse after my baby was born (though some of that was probably due to sleep deprivation). If you’ve experienced this effect as part of your pregnancy or postpartum period, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. In fact, even if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s likely that your husband or partner does (I’m sure my husband was on to me before I realized that my brain had gone soft).
Basically, Nintendo’s Brain Age games provide you with daily brain exercises to stimulate and challenge your mind, and specifically target the prefrontal cortex of your brain. From math problems to literature passages to word scrambles and memory sprints, each exercise takes only a few minutes to complete, very important if you have your hands full with a newborn baby or multiple children. After only a few weeks of ‘exercising’ my brain with the Brain Age games, I could actually feel myself getting smarter, and Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, the Brain Age narrator, would verify my progress by giving me an update each time I turned the DS on (although I found him to be increasingly annoying with his smug little daily tips). Also, the occasional Brain Age checks (which are basically a series of quick exercises to tell you what your ‘brain age’ is – I was something like 65 when I started, but after a few weeks I was below my body age!), helped me to track my progress and motivated me to keep practicing. I have never been good at simple math (I’m the person using my fingers to add things up at the store), but I have to say that the math problems in both Brain Age games helped me to improve my basic math skills dramatically. I may even be smarter now than I was when I attended university. Okay … maybe not, but I’m certainly smarter than I was after giving birth to my two children!
Where can you get your hands on a Nintendo DS and Brain Age 1 & 2? Check out the following retailers – a Nintendo DS system will set you back about $129.99 USD, while each Brain Age game costs about $20 USD.
The other day we were having some friends over for dinner and I was trying to reconcile my desire for a yummy dessert AND my craving for coconut (no, I’m not pregnant!). I decided to make these amazingly delicious cocoa brownies (substituting 1/2 cup of unsweetened coconut for the nuts), but I couldn’t find any coconut ice cream to go with them. In desperation, I grabbed the tub of Liberté Mediterranee Coconut yoghurt I had in the fridge.
Oh-Mah-God it was DELICIOUS! Even the guys were commenting on how amazingly tasty and creamy this yoghurt was. Now it’s not exactly fat free, but at 8.5% milk fat it contains a lot less fat than ice cream and has definitely become my new favourite dessert! That said, Liberté also have an ‘everyday’ line which contains only 2.5% milk fat.
Besides my new BFF flavour Coconut, the Méditerranée line comes in 12 other delicious flavours: plain, vanilla, mocha, strawberry, mango and oranges, plum and walnut, peach and passion fruit, wild blackberry, black cherry, lemon, french hazelnut, and dulce de Leche. While looking on the Liberté site, I also discovered that this French Canadian company makes a line of organic yoghurts for kids (nine months plus) and the website also has some very cool downloadable colouring pages featuring their happy cow.
While most grocery stores carry Liberté products, mine carries these yoghurts in the organic foods section (even though it isn’t!). Look for Liberté products at your favourite grocery store and enjoy!
Carrie!!!
Congrats Carrie! We will contact you via email to grab your details!!! Thanks everyone again for you great comments and suggestions.
I sat down to write a post about a cool shape sorting box, and ended up falling in love with a company. EverEarth (by parent company Maxim Enterprise) creates sustainable wooden toys in an eco-friendly manner, literally from a tree sapling to a store shelf. The EverEarth line of toys are constructed of solid wood from renewable forests, finished with non-toxic water-based paint, and minimally packaged in strictly recycled materials. This company truly takes ‘eco-friendly’ to a new level by only purchasing wood from nurseries that are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, which is an international organization that promotes responsible stewardship of the world’s forests.
And beyond being environmentally and socially responsible, these toys are also creative, entertaining, and visually appealing. This wooden collection is colourful and sleek… the kind of toy you won’t want to hide away when company comes over! We picked up the above shape sorter for Maddie last Christmas, and we have received so many compliments on it.
In regards to the functionality of the shape sorter, I feel it has one downfall. Unlike its plastic shape sorter counterparts, the lid on this toy does not have a mechanism to keep it shut – the lid simply ’sits’ on top of the box. So, when Maddie comes along and flips it around to try and find the right hole for her shape, the lid inevitably falls off and all the shapes wind up on the floor.
We bought our shape sorter box from our local Winners for about $20 (FYI – Winners is a great place to find unique toys at a really reasonable price!). As far as I can tell, you cannot purchase the toys online from the EverEarth website, but almost the full line of toys seems to be available on Amazon. While you’re there check out the Busy Pond Activity Center – this may just have to be Maddie’s next birthday present (cause it’s sooooo cute!).
A HUGE congratulations to Dana, the winner of our mimiTENS mittens giveaway – you’ve won a pair of mimiTENS from their Right To Play collection!
For those of you who still want a pair, mimiTENS is having a 20% sale on all of their fabulous products, so check out their on-line store now for huge savings!
Powered by
Wordpress.
Theme ligneous by
pure-essence.net. Valid
XHTML
&
CSS.
