It's that time of year where we're all rushing around looking for Christmas gift ideas for the kids. Whether it's for your own kids or someone else's, it's not always easy finding something they don't already have.
I've decided to split my Christmas gift guides by price. You don't always have to spend a lot to buy something the little one will love. Trust me I've found some winners and I'm happy to share them with you!
1. Melissa & Doug is a brand I've become a tad obsessed with. They offer an amazing selection of toys and activities. I bought this reusable sticker pad for Lamb for his birthday in March. He's obsessed with stickers and loves animals, so when I saw this was reusable I grabbed it. Best. Decision. Ever. If your kid loves stickers you won't regret buying this. There's a few available, in fact Lamb has most of them! The Melissa & Doug Habitats Reusable Sticker Pad can be bought from Amazon for £3.49 – bargain!
2. Continuing with Melissa & Doug products, we also bought Lamb this sticker collection for his birthday. With a selection of 500 stickers to choose from this will last for ages and has everything from transport to animals. We bought the blue version, but there's a pink one too for the girlies. You can buy the Melissa & Doug Blue Sticker Collection from Amazon for only £2.09!
3. Boy or girl, any toddler I've known or met loves a shopping basket. Unfortunately Lamb doesn't have one anymore after he threw it into the road while having a tantrum and it was run over by a car! Yep. That happened. We have refused to buy him a new one to teach him a lesson. Although I don't think he's really bothered about what happened, he came home gloating about it being run over! You can buy this Little Shopper Fruit and Vegetable Basket from Amazon for £5.
4. Lamb seems to have discovered a love for puzzles recently. Luckily I picked up a farm animal floor puzzle from Tesco in their sale a few days before his birthday, and we are still playing with it now. I've had a look and it's not available anymore, so I've found a similar one from Amazon. For £5 this Orchard Toys Who's on the Farm? puzzle is an absolute bargain. It's perfect for young toddlers, but will last for ages.
So there's my under £5 toddler Christmas gift guide. I hope you've found it useful. Keep an eye out for my next guide which will be toddler Christmas gifts under £10.
This month our Bostik craft box arrived and I was so excited to see lots of blue, white, silver and snowflakes!
Now that Halloween and Bonfire Night is over (which I'm so happy about because I'm not really into them) we can start preparing for my favourite time of year – Christmas!
This week I've been making toddler friendly Christmas decorations with Lamb using our goodies from Bostik, plus some other bits we have lying around.
Crafting with a 2 year old doesn't need to be overly complicated or overly creative. Give them a paintbrush and a glue stick and they're happy! Oh and glitter, lots of glitter.
Using a selection of lollipop sticks, this month we decided to make lollipop stick stars to use as decorations over the Christmas period. If you saw my Bostik post in September you will have seen I also used lollipop sticks then! It seems I have a little obsession. You can see what we made here.
Lollipop sticks are so cheap and easy to use in a million ways. You can buy them from your local craft shop, or you could always save them from the summer mass of ice lolly eating!
Using the PVA white glu in our craft box I made glitter glue by mixing in some silver glitter with the glue. This was then painted on lots of different coloured lollipop sticks to make them festive and sparkly. We had coloured lollipop sticks in our craft box, but you can either stick to plain wooden ones for a more natural look, or paint them different colours yourself.
Next, using the Glu Dots, I stuck 3 lollipop sticks together to make a star or snow flake shape. The Glu Dots are really good for fiddly things like this. They are extra strong and there's no mess.
This craft was super easy to do with very little mess and few materials needed.
The lollipop stick stars can be used for lots of things. We will be decorating our dining room table with them when we eat our Christmas Dinner, alternatively you can hang them to your tree as decorations or hang them around your living room, perhaps along the mantel piece.
As you can see, Lamb is happy with the outcome!
What Christmas crafts have you been doing with your little ones?
* The craft box was provided to me free of charge by Bostik as part of the Tots100/Bostik Craft Bloggers Club.
Little Lamb was very lucky this Christmas and received some lovely gifts from his friends and family. Of course some have become favourites, like with all kids he plays with a few toys over and over, then moves on to another when he gets bored. Here is a few the gifts he received which he has played with constantly since Christmas day. If you are looking for a gift for a 18+ month old (Lamb is 21 months), then I highly recommend these.
The Tomy Aquadoodle is pure genius. Lamb is obsessed with colouring. I don't go a day without him asking for 'colouring'. However, he's bored of crayons – they don't make a strong enough mark on the page. He loves a biro. Which puts mummy's OCD into overdrive when I'm hovering over him making sure he doesn't get a pen mark on the sofa/carpet/table. The Aquadoodle is the answer to my prayers. He thinks he's using a pen, can scribble as much as he wants and as the pen is made up of water, he can draw on pretty much anything and won't leave a mark! Priced at around £20, it's not as cheap as paper and pens (obviously), but is definitely worth the investment.
We really wanted to get Lamb a table and chairs for Christmas as he has outgrown his highchair. To be honest, I can't remember the last time we used it! He feels trapped and frustrated, so after seeing him enjoy sitting at his own table at nursery and toddler group, we decided to get one at home and let him eat and play on his 'big boy chair'. What a good decision that was! He absolutely loves it! Whenever he eats or drinks I ask him to sit on his chair and he does, with no protesting! There are plenty of children's table and chairs available, at a wide variety of prices, but we didn't want to spend much so opted for this crayon themed set. It was easy to assemble and is very sturdy (mummy and daddy can even sit on the chairs!) It retails around £30. Thanks to Jaxsons Grandad for his favourite new place to sit!
If you don't already know, Mummy Bear loves to research and find the best reviewed products. You can always rely on her to buy you something you may not have seen before and that's usually a little quirky. Well, Mummy Bear strikes again! This 'You Hue Colouring Writing Table' by B (one of my fave toy brands) is one of my favourite gifts Lamb received this year. As I've already mentioned, Lamb loves colouring so has pretty much used this every day since he opened it! This is perfect for us to take around with us and gives him the opportunity to sit quietly and colour if we are somewhere that doesn't offer him other toys to play with. When he is a little older he will also be able to use it in the car, which will be amazing for long journeys. The table comes with a set of fun coloured chunky pens each with their own quirky name. This is very much a Mummy Bear product! If you are ever looking for a gift for a baby or toddler, I highly recommend looking at the brand B.
Lamb has a bit of an obsession with Toy Story at the mo. He shouts Buzz at everything he sees that's related to the film. He even recognises the song 'You've got a friend in me' when we play his Disney album in the car! My brother (also a big fan of Toy Story) bought him a Mr Potato Head Fun Tub for Christmas. Once again, as Lamb opened his present to reveal Mr Potato Head he yelled Buzz at the top of his voice. There's nothing more rewarding than watching your child open a present they truly love and want to play with instantly. There are a few Mr Potato Head toys available, but I think the fun tub is ideal for Lambs age. He can mix and match the different attachments, and mummy can tidy them all away safely in the tub when he's finished! Bliss!
Another current obsession of Lambs is The Gruffalo. We have watched the DVD over and over again, and then some more. It was Christmas 2013 when he received the DVD, book, pjs and big Gruffalo teddy from my mum, so I asked her to do the same this year, but get him The Gruffalo's Child. Once again a huge success! Lamb has learned all of the animals and is constantly shouting mouse, owl and fox when watching the film. This year he also got a couple of Gruffalo games, like this word rhyming game. Although he is a little young to play properly, he loves mixing up the cards and looking for the ones with the owl on (currently his favourite animal). There are four in total so unless he has all four in his hands he shouts 'more!' until he has them all. Games like this are great for learning, not only with animals, but also colours and words.
I could add a few more to this list, but I think I'll stop at 5! Perhaps I'll do another post with some more of his christmas gifts as he starts playing with them. One thing I will add is a 21 month old can't have enough stickers! We have gone through sticker book after sticker book and used up a lot of 'stick sticks!' I know Baby Bear has the same love for a sticker.
As Lamb's 2nd Birthday is only 3 months away, I'd love to know what your recommended toddler toys or gifts are. Feel free to comment below and leave any links to posts you have done so I can start writing his birthday wish list!
Christmas this year will be like no other. We've had a very busy schedule and poor Lamb has been in the middle of all of it.
Friday 19th December: Dinner with Joes friends. Lamb stayed at Grandma's house.
Saturday 20th December: Final day of wedding preparations. I picked up my dress and wedding cake (which meant dragging Lamb around town). Lamb was dropped off at Grandma's (again) and I stayed the night at Vicky's with the bridesmaids before the big day!
Sunday 21st December: Our wedding day! Lamb was at Grandma's until around 11:30am. Joe picked him up and drove him to the venue (where I was already getting ready). Unfortunately Lamb was poorly on our wedding day. He had a cold and was very unsettled. During our ceremony we had to pass him to Joe's parents while we said our vows and he wasn't happy about this! The poor guy had spent two nights away from us and was feeling very attached to mummy and daddy! We had Lamb in our bed the night of the wedding. Personally, I felt so guilty for leaving him with Joe's mum so much before the wedding, I really wanted sleepy cuddles with him! The bed was huge, I mean seriously huge. So there was plenty of room for the 3 of us!
Monday 22nd December: After breakfast at the venue we went to Joe's parents house for a family gathering and an early Christmas buffet. Around 3pm Joe and I set off for Cambridge on our 'mini moon' – without Lamb. Yep, he stayed at Grandma's one more night. I actually had a tear in my eye leaving him this time. He wasn't happy to watch us drive away. 5 minutes after we left Joe's sister sent us a photo of Lamb playing and he was totally fine – and relax.
Tuesday 23rd December: Joe and I spent a lovely day shopping in Cambridge. It was my first time there and I absolutely loved it – it's like walking around Hogwarts! I have to be honest, it was really nice to spend some quality time together after the wedding (baby free). Due to Joe being made redundant and starting his career again next year we decided not to go on a honeymoon. We need to save every penny to pay bills while Joe is retraining. So a night away was our little treat to ourselves to celebrate our marriage. We left Cambridge around 2:30pm and got to Joe's parents at 4pm. Today was Joe's sisters birthday so I spent the event with her and our girlfriends eating pizza and gossiping like we have done every year since we've know each other!
Wednesday 24th December: Due to a very busy year of planning the wedding, Joe and I decided against Christmas presents this year. That was until we were overwhelmed with wedding gifts and cards and decided we had to buy gifts for everyone. So Christmas Eve was spent shopping. Joe met his friends in the pub, we had some lunch, and off I went shopping again. I have to say, at this point Christmas became seriously stressful for me. If you don't already know, I'm a perfectionist and hate being unorganised, and this year was my most unorganised Christmas yet!
Thursday 25th December: When Lamb was born Joe and I decided we would make sure he woke up in his own bed on Christmas morning. We want to make sure we give ourselves those precious few hours of quality family time and get to watch Lamb open his gifts with no disturbances. Last year he was a little young to open his gifts, but this year was totally magical. At lunch time we drove to Joe's parents, opened a few more gifts then jumped in the cars and drove to his Uncle's where we were having Christmas dinner.
Friday 26th December: We spend Boxing Day morning with Joe's family. Joe's Uncle had a lovely big house so Lamb has loads of fun when he's there. He can run, run, run!! After lunch we drove home to have a second Christmas dinner with my brother and sister-in-law and their kiddies.
So that was our busy Christmas! I thought I'd write a brief diary style blog post of our antics as so much has happened! Of course I will be writing more detail posts about both the wedding and our Christmas so look out for these posts if you're keen to hear more!
With Christmas fast approaching you might be thinking about organising gifts, decorations and cards etc. Or maybe you're super organised and you have already got everything… thumbs up if you have!
That's not the case in our house. We are way too busy planning our wedding to think about Christmas, but when I got the opportunity to review Lapland Mailroom santa letters it made me realise how little time I have left to get everything organised. Hopefully this review will come in use to you and will give you a little nudge to think about ordering those special santa letters for your little one sooner rather than later.
Last year Vicky surprised Little Lamb with his very first santa letter and I repaid the gesture to Baby Bear. I think santa letters are such a lovely tradition you can start with your children from their very first Christmas. We will certainly be doing it every year and keeping each one in his keepsake box. Who remembers receiving their Santa letters when they were younger? I do! I genuinely believed Santa had replied to the letter I had sent him.
My first impressions of the Lapland Mailroom letters were really good. The envelope is fun, without being too obvious, which I think is important. At the end of the day, you want your children to believe it is a real letter from santa; one that should look similar to the letters mummy and daddy receive daily.
Lapland Mailroom offer 3 letter packages.
You can also order a 'Nice Child List' certificate with their name on for £2.95, however they are currently offering these for free with each package. So well worth ordering soon so you can save some pennies!
As they are offering the 'Nice Child List' certificate free of charge at the moment, we also received this in our pack. I love it! When Lamb is a little older and understands about the naughty and nice lists, I'm sure this added detail to his Santa letter will put the biggest smile on his face.
My honest opinion of these letters is they are high quality, well thought out and very believable to children. I have seen a few of these types of letters over the years and some can be way to childish and colourful. I feel the Lapland Mailroom letters are what you would expect a letter from Santa to look like.
We are very happy to be able to offer our followers the opportunity to win their very own personalised Santa letter with an activity pack and nice list certificate, and we have 5 of them to giveaway! Enter via the form below. Good luck!
* we were sent these letters free of charge for our honest opinion and review.