Halloween 2009

Here's Russell as 'Barrel' (of the trio Lock Shock and Barrel from the Nightmare Before Christmas) You should see the other two! You should! I mean, I wish you could, but...uh...no, I have no pictures of the other two. (sigh...)

But yes, I DID have a lovely trio of trick-or-treaters, with surprisingly little begging on my part - but no pics!!!! Dangit! So, we'll see if I can't get them back in costume for posterities sake...(oh the things we do!...)

Blues and purples...

This color combination is giving me such joy...I was so tempted to add in more colors and now, am so glad I held on to my original plan...Happy Spring!

Happy Give-Your-Kids-A-New-Toy-for-No-Reason Day!

Today, when a big box arrived from one of my favorite online shops, Reallygreattoys.com, I decided not to wait, but declare it a holiday and hand out some fun new things! The kids went crazy and played beautifully together from lunchtime until bedtime and even put everything neatly on the coffee table for Daddy to see when he got home after bedtime from his board meeting...it was well worth his raised eyebrow over the seemingly random expense!

I have a nice high shelf in my closet, and thought I'd hide these new toys up there, like, I'm 'getting ready' for real holidays in the future, but you know, kids grow up fast! I mean, really!

Our 'baby' is already 14 months old and 'talking' about bunnies and sheep and flowers (in baby signs) so should I really wait till her next gift-able holiday to give her a little toy bunny or a set of cows? That would mean waiting till Christmas! She may be actually talking by then!

And my 6yr old, he is sooooo into the Titanic right now. Sheesh. Am I going to let him watch the movie? Heck no. Can I prevent him from bringing home book after book about that ship from his school's library? Not really. However, I can, and do refuse to read these morbid books as bedtime stories, but he is so insistant that they be read to him at some point during the day, it's not been easy! I also recently realized he's been playing 'Titanic' in the bathtub. Ugh. He really wanted to understand 'why' the Titanic is still on the floor of the ocean. (Well, it's really, really, really in deep water...and, um, it's a graveyard? ...I don't know.)

He is only 6. But he is already 6! He already has his own ideas about so much! And (since he was a newborn his first Christmas) I've only had 5 Christmas's and 5 birthdays worth of 'official' gift-able holidays with which to shape him and his world! (I'm only half serious, but I am half serious.) I want his world to be a happy one! With meadows and little bunnies and flowers everywhere! And possibly fairies and gnomes! I mean, why not?!

I think I am trying to extend his so-called 'innocence of childhood' with a little retail therapy for myself mixed in. :)

So, today he received a really "Awesome! I can't believe you bought this for me! I never even saw this in a store! I would have begged you for this! Please can I go take a bath right now?!" toy that I think he likes and will help him work through this whole Titanic obssession, in a more scientific, less morbid sort of way. Hopefully.

And we also got a sweet little meadow with flowers, bunnies and sheep.

And also a darling Gnome Home.

Because.

Plastic toys we HATE...

PJ Sparkles Mini Playset Pj's Magical Lights Bedroom review

***0 Stars*** NO STARS***

Ok, I mean I hate. PJ Sparkles. I hate you. What a waste of money/space/plastic/earth's resources/pollution...argh. This was a birthday present to my daughter from a classmate. My daughter says she 'loves' it. But she doesn't play with it. It sits, in all its pink and purple plastic-y large awkward footprint take-up-a-whole-shelf kind of way in her room, and my dear daughter, sweet girl, does not know how to 'hate' it properly OR how to play with it.

On the very first night, she sadly pushed all the cardboard paper 'knick-knacks' and tiny plastic hairbrushy things that came with the castle-ish playset inside the turret-like 'closet' and shut the rounded door as best as she could and sighed. "PJ Sparkle's crown won't stay on her head, and her things don't fit in her closet, Mama. And her bed is so hard and she keeps sliding off. Can you help me to get her teddy bear to sit on her table?" Um, no, sorry honey, her table is so slanted, nothing will stay on there at all(!).

I asked her if maybe PJ Sparkles is just not a very good toy and that maybe we should think about giving her away (yeah, like to the garbage can, except I feel even worse about contributing to a landfill, so it'll go to the Salvation Army) but my Dd5 said no, not yet. She still 'likes her ok' but even so was very disapointed in the transformation of PJ Sparkles short skirt to long nightgown. "I thought she was going to have a real nightie, but she's just sleeping in her day clothes, Mama. Can you make her a real nightie?"

No honey, sorry. I can't waste one single second more on this awful toy, except to write about it.

So. I am writing about this toy because I really, truly, thought this was a dollar store toy, it is soooo cheaply made. Her chest and the playset do 'sparkle' or rather, light up, for a few seconds, but only 2 of the 3 lights over the 'mirror' (a bubbly bit of junk) do work and overall it just looks and feels so cheap. Really like a dollar store item. Or a $2 store item.

And then I saw it at Target. Wow. Shame on you Target. Made by Zizzle. (Huh? Who?) Whoever you are Zizzle, shame on you too. I mean, outside of the nearly $20 this 'cost', what are the real costs? How much new waste was produced making this awful playset? How much new landfill or - ack- incinerator toxins? Not to mention the cost to my good humor whenever I see the thing taking up valuable space in her room/my house!

So, anyhow, I did cut her a piece of polar fleece for a quickie doll blanket, and it does help to keep her on that plastic, slanty bed, but I swear, the doll and the playset has sat, untouched, ever since. Just a new piece of clutter to be dusted around. Argh.

This piece of awful is on it's way OUT.

Plastic toys we LOVE...

I don't want to get too Montessori/Waldorf -i-ish on y'all, so I'm going to include some of our all-time favorite plastic toys in these reviews of mine.

I'm hoping these reviews help other families to have less 'quantity' and more 'quality' toys.. I am in the process of weeding out our toy bins...which can be a challenge, considering that we have both boys and girls as well as baby, 'little kid' and 'big kid' toys.

Ok, so here is my first favorite plastic toy review:

Playmobile 1-2-3
*****5*****
Five stars! Larger than regular Playmobile toys (Bumble-bee girl measures 2.25 x 1.25 inches), these streamlined, smooth plastic toys are just lovely and feel great in the hand. Sturdy, well-made, nicely jointed, (at neck and waist) with simplified shapes, this line is safe for babies and yet still interesting enough for my Dd5 and Ds6. (Darling daughter who is 5, and Darling son who is 6.) We have even used these as tub toys and as sandbox toys. They can take it, and they do dry out, (but sand in my house is a pet peeve of mine, so unless we buy seperate toys for outside use only, these are to stay indoors only).

The people fit nicely where they should (on the horse, in the cart, etc) and the animals fit nicely in our favorite (also plastic) barn (I'll be back later today to post that review).

I also really like the charming and whimsical bumble bee girl and her spinning flower and the lady-bug-boy on his snail. Strange and perfect, perfectly strange? The flower spins, the snail rattles, the baby loves them and I do too. I think I'm in a 'woodland' phase these days...can't get enough fairys and gnomes and mushrooms...and bug-kids...

Grimm's Spiel & Holz Wooden Rainbow (and how to finish wood with a non-toxic sealer)

Grimm's Spiel & Holz Wooden Rainbow

****4 stars****

Ok, so we just got this in the medium size (best price $28.95 at threesisterstoys.com) and I have to say I am loving this toy almost as much as the kids are.

But. BUT.

When it arrived (just before Easter, an Easter basket present for the 14 month old) it was SOOOO rough, I could NOT believe it. The inside curve of each rainbow was nearly splintery!

I wish I had taken pictures. I had my husband feel it, and he thought I should return it.

However, this toy gets such great reviews online, that I decided it might just be an anomaly...anyhow, I decided to 're-finish' it.

Yup. I'm crazy.

But it was not really hard, I just sanded it (rather lightly, afraid I was sanding off the color, but as you can see it still is quite colorful) especially the inner sides of the curves and then oiled each piece with mineral oil on a rag and then waxed each piece with a mix of beeswax and mineral oil, about 2 parts oil to 5 parts beeswax.

How? Just melt grated beeswax in a puddle of mineral oil in a double boiler (be careful not to do this directly in a saucepan, as beeswax can catch fire!) and apply while warm to your wood with a rag. Allow to cool and then buff off excess with the same rag. (I used a cloth diaper.) You can even get a little shine if you repeat the process. (I did it just the once.)

The result is what you see in my pictures, and is exactly what I wanted and thought I was going to get when I opened the box. (Are you familiar with Plan Toys? They feel GREAT, and are less expensive. But they are usually less of an 'open-ended' sort of toy.)

Now, to be fair, this toy arrives sealed in a plastic wrapper, so there is no way the people at threesisterstoys.com could have known that this rainbow felt splintery and 'dried out', but it did. Dried out is a good way to describe it. Just not great. Like it would snap in half if a kid stood on it. But now it really feels great. Really.

When I was looking online for a good non-toxic finish to apply to these, I read that wood likes oil, needs oil, or it becomes brittle, and that beeswax has been used for centuries as a wood 'sealer' but has such a large molecule that it needs to be mixed with oil so that it can penetrate the wood.

So this finish was pleasant to work with, smelled great, and is considered food-safe, although some people have a beef with the mineral oil aspect.

I even like it well enough now that I would be willing to 'fix' their nesting boxes and bowls, if those arrived in the same condition. I'm considering ordering them even as I write this.

Has anyone puchased these and found them to be smooth?
Was my shipment just a deviation from the norm?

I did read a review that said 'because Spiel & Holz does not finish their wood with a shiny finish, these are 'easy to stack' (Haba's blocks are a tad on the shiny/slippery side) but I really received such a rough and splintery-feeling toy that I did not want to give it to my kids at all. Especially not the baby.

Anyhow, I would have given it 5 stars had I not had to work to get the finish 'right'.

Because really, it is a great open-ended toy and has been played with every single day by every single one of my kids, plus the grown-ups like it too.

Toy Reviews!

I have a not-so-secret passion for toys...love 'em! We have too many, like many over-indulgent American households do, though my goal is, as always, to only have beautiful, interesting and 'smart' toys...and occasionally do weed out the toys I have grown to 'hate'(...more about those later).

I actually have a quote pasted above my desk that reads:

"The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst beautiful things"

-Plato

Ha. How's that for a sweeping rationalization for retail therapy!

Well, in any case, we have some favorite toys that I'd like to let you in on before that awful CPSIA law takes away our options to buy anything except Mattel and Fisher Price.
*************************************************

Here's my first review:

Colorframes Building Blocks by Karen Hewitt of Art & Play design.

*****"5 Stars!"*****

These were a gift for 3 year old Russell's birthday from relatives who live in New York City.

Beautiful. 42 colors, no two blocks match, and it comes with a wooden tray that nicely contains the blocks and allows for all the blocks to be accounted for at clean-up time.

The blocks are painted on the edges and one side, with the other side left plain wood, but finished.

My eldest (age 6) might love these even more than the 3 year old, and together (together!) they have built some very cool and unexpected creations...including a long and winding road for their cars to travel on. Including a multi-level 'garage' for said cars to park in.

Really open-ended play and very pleasing in design and feel. My 17 year old niece spent nearly 45 minutes trying to organize the colors into a proper spectrum but the colors are sophisticated and challenging and therefore a bit difficult to organize. Really fun. Definitely a toy that will 'grow' with your child. Would be a nice addition to Dad's office too.

Right now you can buy them on sale at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art on sale here,

or, directly from the Art & Play site for (a lot) more. Apparently you can also buy the same 42 piece set in a wall-mountable box for about $100US more, but I love the scale and put-away-able-ness of our set.

Great toy! Thanks guys!