Paper Wonderland
The temperatures over here have dropped into the -0°celsius level, which is a rare occurence. When it does happen, the whole of Paris seems to go off to hiberate in their homes. Which is where you’ll find us, snuggled up in our house! Time for some crafting…
We were recently given the Paper Wonderland book and we are officially obsessed. With some scissors and some tape, you get to put together some of the coolest creatures and little projects I have seen. Some are more complicated than others (great when you have kids of different ages) but the end result is super cute and great to play with, so the enjoyment goes beyond just crafting. I highly recommend it!
- Emilie
Soeur
I am what is described as petite, and now that I have accepted the fact that I will very likely never, ever be a super model (just accepted that one!), I do think being small has some big advantages. I can wear terribly high heels, fit into small spaces and I can often buy clothes in the kid’s department. You can by some seriously nice children’s clothes and they are often half the price of the adult’s version. Check out the great label Soeur. The clothes are fabulous: easy going jumpers, jeans and dresses (and the sale is on at the moment). I fully take advantage of the fact that apparently I am the same height as an average 14-year-old girl!
The only time this has not worked out for me, is the other day when I was picking up my girls from school. I suddenly realised, watching the kids pour out of the school, that every boy between 5-15 was wearing the exact same coat as me, which I had picked up at GAP Kids in the boys department! Obviously their mothers and I have the same taste…
- Emilie
Pippi Longstocking
Do you remember reading Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren when you were a child? It was my absolute favourite. Pippi was our superhero: an orphan with bright red hair and incredible stories to tell, who lives on her own with a horse and a monkey and does not conform to anything.
I had totally forgotten about this book (It made me a bit sad that something that had been so special to me, had slipped out of my memory), until I stumbled over a copy of it today in a bookshop. And the copy I stumbled over is pretty special. The story of Pippi, which must have been written more than 50 years ago, has been given a face lift with illustrations by Lauren Child, famous from the UK TV show, Charlie and Lola. The illustrations are super charming and work beautifully with this story. I cannot wait to read this book to my kids. Coco, who is now 6 will be captivated by the story and 3-year-old Violette will love the pictures!
- Emilie
Adding and subtracting with the Abacus
Calculators have been around at least since the ancient Greeks… in the form of a nifty invention: the Abacus. Imagine being the person came up with the idea of the Abacus — they must have been pretty chuffed with themselves…
As Coco is now navigating her way through the first year of French education, I thought that an Abacus would be actually a useful tool for her to get used to the idea of adding and subtracting. I had been given an Abacus from Ikea ages ago and it had only ever been used as a toy. It now has a proud place on Coco’s little desk, and it is really interesting how much she is enjoying adding beads together, taking some away and seeing how it all works out.
P.S. Interestingly the children here in France are discouraged to use their fingers to add and substract. I guess it is so that they learn to visualise the numbers. Is it the same in your country?
- Emilie
Buttonbag Craft Kits
Something seems to have happend to Coco since she turned 6. It seems like she woke up one morning and her hand coordination and patience had suddenly increased. I guess she is not a little girl anymore! She cannot wait to use these new found skills and now there is a serious demand for arts and craft sessions in our house. I do try to come up with my own projects, but there are times when a craft kit is a life saver! A great example are the Buttonbag Craft Kits, which are perfectly catered toward eager 6-year-olds. The projects are simple and the results impressive. I particularly like the Winter Birds Kit and the Peg Doll Kits.
- Emilie
Pinatas
Seriously, is there anything better in the world than beating on a massive ball with a stick and, when you finally smash it open, being showered in bonbons? It’s no wonder kids go crazy for piñatas.
Piñatas had not really crossed my radar until I went on holiday to Mexico last year. But now we can’t possibly consider a birthday party complete without a good piñata bashing! Here in Paris I pick our piñatas up from a lovely shop called La Pinata, which is along the Canal St Martin (the photo above is of a pinata I picked up for Coco’s birthday last week). I have also found a ton of piñata DIY posts online, like these by the lovely Oh Happy Day blog, just in case you do not have a handy piñata shop around the corner!
By the way, it is hilarious watching the way kids react when they are picking the bonbons out of the broken pinata. Some just go crazy and try to grab whatever they can, others stand back observe and hone in for the choice pickings!
- Emilie
Birthday Party Paper Cut-Out
My children’s birthday parties must be the most exciting day of their lives. However, I am much more hesitant. I have no problems baking the cakes, decorating the room and getting the party favours ready. It is entertaining all the children that scares me! They are a tough audience, these 6-year-olds, so the pressure is on.
It was Coco’s birthday party this weekend, and I needed to come up with some games to play inside on a cold, winter day in a small flat in Paris! One of most successful games was a whole body paper cut-out, and hilariously enough, was also the simplest to organise. We got the kids to lie down on a big piece of paper and drew the outline of their body. We then drew on some accessories and the kids finished them off. After they were done, we cut out the faces and held the piece of paper up so that the kids could stick their face through it. (Apparently this was one of the funniest thing ever!)
After that we got them to dance, cracked open a pinata, ate cake, dressed up and suddenly it was time for all these little people to go home again, tired and happy! Phew, another birthday party successfully navigated!
- Emilie
Rien à Cirer
I have just had my entire flat repainted. My favourite part of having builders in is certainly not living on a building site, but spending countless hours daydreaming about how to decorate the rooms. So much fun, even if only 10% of my ideas actually ever see the light of the day! I am a big fan of old stuff; I like things that are not too perfect and which look like they have been around for a while.
Rien à Cirer is a super cute little company I discovered at the Mini Vintage Fair last month. I love the way they use old furniture and give it a new life with beautiful colours and little touches, while keeping the vintage feel alive. It really feels very French to me, but with a nice twist! I picked up a little unit similar to this one to hang up in my bathroom. And how cool would this type of dresser look in a children’s room?
- Emilie
Weekend Getaway: Munich
Courtney and I spent a hilarious weekend seven years ago (pre-children) at the October Fest in Munich. It was great fun: there was a lot of beer, schnapps, bretzels, German sausages, sleeping and card playing involved. I don’t think we had ever seen so many people our age in lederhosen and dirndls. It was definitely not the kind of weekend you would have with kids.
I am pretty sure that a weekend in Munich now would be very, very different, but potentially as much fun — it is a beautiful city, very traditional but also very happening. For some local insight on what Munich has to offer for kids, Mitali, a stay-at-home mom living in Munich, has very kindly given us her tips and recommendations on what to do in the capital of Bavaria. She is a mother of two (son Nilay 6 years, daughter Nalini 7 months) and the proud owner of a crazy dog, Greta. She loves travelling and has lived all around the world, but, in the end, has always enjoyed coming home to Munich. She has some great ideas of what to do in Munich! (more…)
Bringing up bilingual
A friend of mine recently referred to the way my 3-year-old daughter speaks as Creole. It a great way of describing it: she speaks an absolute mixture of French and English. Phrases like “Can you s’il te please tirer my culotte” (please pull up my undies) are very normal in our household and it is so cute I don’t want it to change! But it won’t last; she is quickly learning to differentiate her two languages.
In our household I try to only speak English at home and the children are exposed to French at school and with their friends. I myself grew up with a French mother, and an Irish father but spent my childhood in Germany, so I grew up speaking English, French and German. I actually now have a bit of an accent in every language I speak! As a child I really did not enjoy coming from a multi-lingual family as I felt I was different from my friends. My girls have the great advantage of going to an inner-city Paris school where a huge amount of the kids speak at least two languages, if not more.
So now that I am trying to bring up my kids bi-lingually myself, I have done a bit of research. I am not an expect in anyway, but here are some of the facts I thought were interesting:
- Being bi-lingual or tri-lingual has nothing to do with intelligence, people of different levels of intelligence are multi-lingual.
- Children start differentiating between languages around the ages of 2-3.
- Bi-lingual children do not usually learn to speak later because of learning different languages, as previously thought.
- One of the simplest approaches towards having bilingual children seems to be the one-parent/one-language approach. It is easier for a child to differentiate a language if one person speaks one language consistently to them.
Voila! I am really interested to hear if anyone else has tips and ideas on how to bring up kids with several languages!
- Emilie
ONE YEAR AGO WE WROTE ABOUT:
• Win! Broer&Zus outfit of choice!• Julia Eccleshare’s top ten book list
• Top Ten Book Lists
Famille Summerbelle Wallpaper
I have been a bit interior-decor obsessed lately, as I have been redoing my flat. We have been living in a building site with dust everywhere! Coco managed to lean against a freshly painted white wall: the result was a white line all down her back from her hair to her jeans, just like a skunk. But, slowly, the result is showing: pulling up the old carpet has revealed a beautiful oak parquet and I have spent several evenings obsessing over the different shades of grey Farrow and Ball paints have to offer. There are worse things to do in life. (On a side note: it has been a very different cultural experience having builders in between France and the UK. In France, the builders were totally nonplussed by my offer of tea and biscuits — I was almost offended!).
Now that the perfect grey has been chosen, the next project is the girls’ room. I have been thinking of putting up wallpaper on at least some of the walls! How lovely is this Famille Summerbelle wallpaper? It is appropriately called: Un dimanche à Paris (A Sunday in Paris). Is it a bit exagerated to have a Paris-themed wallpaper when you live in Paris? I am not sure!
- Emilie
Nils and Happy to see you Star Dress
I have been given some very firm instructions regarding Christmas presents, as there isn’t anything my kids like to do more than dress up and develop some very, very complex story lines for hours and hours. (I guess it could be worse — they could be demanding to watch TV all day!) Anyway, with these firm instructions in hand, I fell upon the magical Pluies d’Étoiles (star rain) dress by Nils and Happy to see you. This dress is actually so beautifully simple, it doesn’t really classify as a dress-up dress… but more of a party dress that is dreamy enough for a little girl to feel like a princess in.
Nils and Happy to see you is a quintessential French label which always stikes the right note between what moms want to see their daughter wearing and what kids want to wear themselves.
- Emilie
Ivoy Paris
When I found out I was going to have a daughter, I had this deluded idea that my child would only play with wooden toys and that there certainly would be no princess dresses in our house. Oh, how naive I was! Five years, two daughters and about 15 polyester princess dresses later, our dress-up box has become quite famous with the under fives on our block. And now we have a reputation to keep!
Now, it turns out that even in the world of fake princess dresses, there are cheap and cheerful models and, on the other end of the scale, there’s Haute Couture. The dresses by Ivoy Paris fall into the later category. The taffeta, the ruffles, the lace and the elaborate cuts of these dresses are quite spectacular. They are probably what little girls imagine a genuine princess dress to be like. They do come with a certain price tag, but this is truely the creme de la creme of princess dress-up dresses….
- Emilie
Golden Hook
Have you heard about Golden Hook? It is the greatest concept I’ve heard about in a long time! You choose your hat and with it a grannie who is going to knit it for you. So stinkin’ cute! They have recently started a kids line…
A few years ago a guy called Jeremy realised that, while visiting his great aunt in her retirement home, a lot of the ladies there were bored and would love to earn a little bit of extra money on the side. The idea for Golden Hook was born! You choose a hat, a scarf or a snood and 15 days later you’ll receive a freshly made item, carefully hand-knitted. It’s kind if cool to know that your child’s hat has been made the old fashioned way, no?
- Emilie
Tripp Trapp Newborn Set
There are so many great new baby gadgets and baby gear on the market these days that I am almost sad I don’t have a newborn to check them all out! Take the Tripp Trapp Newborn Set – such a great new invention. I always found it a bit sad not to have my children at the table when they were little babies. They were normally in a bouncy chair under the table or somewhere in a corner. I love the idea of this contraption which you assemble onto a normal Tripp Trapp chair (I think every single of us Babyccino girls have these highchairs for our kids). It means that the child can sit and be part of the family from the start. It also means that you don’t inadvertently trip over them, because you have momentarily forgotten that they have been stuck somewhere on the floor.
- Emilie
P.S. While I am at it here is another great newborn invention: a white noise iphone app that apparently calms down newborns immediately!
Ada Ada Tights
I don’t think there is anything more frustrating in life than waking your child up in the morning, trying to get her to dress in a hurry in order to get her to school on time… and then being told: “I don’t like that outfit!” This is not a debate to be had at 7.30 in the morning. Are your kids that picky?
One of the main areas of debate is the refusal of jeans and trousers. Have these 5-year-olds never heard about the feminist movement and how hard our female ancestors picketed not to have to wear skirts? We are coming full circle! Though I am morally opposed, I do often give in, so there are a lot of little warm winter tights being paired up with dresses and skirts over here in my flat in Paris.
I love these simple, warm and comfortable tights by one of my favourite labels Ada Ada. They go with everything and are a very good backup solution to those jeans that are never going to be worn!
- Emilie
Kimono Doll Kit
I have just started to scratch the surface of my Christmas shopping list — how did I ever manage anything without the internet?! How cool is this Kimono Doll Kit as a big stocking filler? Coco, who is now 5, is really getting into sewing and I have been a bit hesitant leaving her on her lonesome with needles. (Possibly I am being a bit overprotective? As she herself points out: If you don’t let me do it, how will I ever learn?).
Anyway, this nifty little kit comes with a plastic needle, lots of pre-cut fabric pieces and other bits and bobs so she can go straight into crafting mode. Perfect for a post-Christmas chilly afternoon! It’s available from Alex & Alexa.
- Emilie
ONE YEAR AGO WE WROTE ABOUT:
• Diesel Straight Leg Jeans from Mini Wardrobe• FlexiBath, the smart solution baby bath!
I-Wood toy computer
I’m not sure if your kids are the same as mine, but my girls are obsessed with my computer. They make their own computers out of cardboard and it seems to be an essential component when playing the Mummy and Papa game. A sign of the times, I guess…
How cool is this toy computer by Donkey Products? It is totally designed to appeal to parents as much as to their kids, but I do love the idea: a chalk board hidden inside a laptop! Apart from looking good, it is also a really handy toy to have while you are out and about, as it folds down neatly with the chalk stashed away inside.
-Emilie
ONE YEAR AGO WE WROTE ABOUT:
• Flat Out a cozy cuddle!• Paper Snowflakes
• Christmas selection at Smallable
Marvelous Merveilles
The French word merveilles translates as ‘marvelous’ and it is also the name for a brand I just discovered. It is the perfect name as the the clothers are indeed marvelous! I love the warm, muted colours, the lovely fabrics and wool, and the fact that they are so simple and unfussy. So cozy for the winter!
The philosophy behind the brand is to create clothes that are stylish and contemporary but do not dress up kids as mini adults. That kind of thinking really appeals to me! At the moment the website only exists in French, but with a bit of help of google translator, you should be able to navigate through the site.
- Emilie
School photos
There is nothing that appeals more to my cheesy side than annual school photos. They are always so funny, from the cheesy backgrounds (check out the pastel rainbow concoction Violette and Coco where photographed against) to the startled look that all kids sport. I love the totally un-natural smile, it has become such a classic — kids have now been doing this for generations and it is great that some things never change (I looked exactly like that too on my school photos).
A few years ago one of our teachers tried to get a stylish photographer (we live in Paris after all) to take the school photos and it was a total disaster. All the kids looked like their favourite toy had been taken away, the photos were only in black and white and without the crazy background that belongs to a classic school photos; it just did not look right!
Long may the tradition of the cheesy photo continue. This year our photos came with one of those great plastic keyrings that you can stick the little photos in — it just does not get much better than that!
- Emilie
ONE YEAR AGO WE WROTE ABOUT:
• Autumn craft — A not-so-scary spiderweb• Two-in-one Parka from Bibaloo
