KIDS
Marie Puce new spring collection (and setting up our Easter tree)
Amsterdam is in full spring bloom! The city fields and roadsides are sprinkled with daffodils and flower stands are overflowing with tulips. Our house is all of a sudden so bright and colourful, with loads of that beautiful crisp, early-year sunshine beaming in and tons of little vases and baskets with flowers scattered about. I love this time ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
Sweet and sugar-free Valentine's party
I love to create small and sweet celebrations out of holidays, and Valentine's Day is no exception! While I was heavily pregnant last year, I wanted to do a fuss-free Valentine's Day 'baking' activity with my daughter, but without the dreaded sugar crash afterwards. So we made watermelon hearts, which are bake free, and only sweet ...
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CHRISTMAS RECIPES
Some yummy seasonal cookies
We love baking during the Christmas season and these two cookie recipes we make every year. Speculaas (just like pepernoten) are very specific to December as we relate them to Sinterklaas, but where pepernoten really only hit the scene when the Saint is in town, we like to enjoy speculaas the rest of the year as ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
Easy Christmas craft: ribbon and stick christmas trees
Around this time every year we take our kids off to our local garden center to pick out a small Christmas tree for the corner of their bedroom. I did the same growing up and I can remember the excitement of choosing my very own tree, opening my special box of decorations and falling asleep ...
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CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS
Keeping Christmas Simple -- with Simple Matters author Erin Boyle
Meet Erin Boyle, mama of one with another one on the way, friend of Babyccino, and author of both the fabulous blog, Reading My Tea Leaves and the super inspiring book called Simple Matters: living with less and ending up with more. We recently reached out to Erin to ask for her expert advice on simplifying ...
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CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS
Our activity advent calendar -- redesigned and ready to print!
Two years ago I started our first activity advent calendar and it has quickly become a firm family tradition. The children are so excited each morning of advent -- taking turns to open an envelope and discovering what special thing we'll be doing that day. This year, I wanted to make a bit more of ...
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CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS
KalenderHaus, a beautiful advent activity by Clever Gretel
We just enjoyed a lovely long weekend, in which we didn't do much more than cozying up inside our house in our pyjamas. The children played together endlessly -- they built huts, set up a shop, made a city on our living room floor using masking tape, set up their Playmobil horse farm, crafted mini ...
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TOYS & GAMES
Our annual Holiday Gift Guides!
I am literally still finding places to stash the Halloween candies away... and holiday season is already slowly making its way into our consciousness. To top it all off, it has even started snowing in Paris! Not long and it did not settle -- but enough to get us into the mood and bring out ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
DIY Baby Bunting
A beautiful bunting is a great way to celebrate the birth of a newborn and a fun project for the older sibling(s) to do too! I received a beautiful fabric bunting during my first pregnancy that my thoughtful and creative friends made as a gift for me. But when I took the bunting out to use ...
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CELEBRATIONS
Happy Easter!!!
Happy Easter everyone! Easter is one of my favourite holidays -- the idea of celebrating the beginning of spring is just so wonderful. We have been spending the days cooking, eating, and hanging out with friends and I thought it would be nice to share some of our Easter traditions with you... A week or two before Easter, ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
Easter DIY: Salt Dough Egg Ornaments
Spring is finally here and it is the perfect time for some Easter crafts! I just love salt dough because it’s made fast and doesn’t cost a lot – all you need it flour, salt and water! We already made Christmas ornaments and they turned out great so we decided to make Easter ones as ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
The Little Things: making traditional Orthodox easter eggs
Last year, we were kindly invited to celebrate Orthodox Easter with our friends Vicky and Jeremy here in Amsterdam. Vicky and Jeremy are from Australia and are spending a few years in the Netherlands, but Vicky is originally from Macedonia. She grew up celebrating the traditional Orthodox Easter with her Macedonian family -- the most significant celebration of the ...
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CELEBRATIONS
Sweet illustrations, by Laura Uy
Laura Uy is a Canadian illustrator with such a lovely, playful style. Her work mainly focusses on greeting cards and prints, which make great decor pieces for children's rooms. I love that bear in the photo above, so whimsical (the gold stars are hand-painted and make the print extra pretty). Laura's greeting cards have such sweet illustrations with the cutest puns. There are cards for ...
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CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS
Last-Minute Holiday DIY: Christmas Tree Ornament
December hasn’t been on my side too much this year. I came down with a really bad cold and my immune system has crashed completely. But I’m finally feeling better after a few long weeks and even though Christmas is behind us already (can you believe it?!) we just started with our December crafts. Holidays ...
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BOOKS
Christmas Eve at The Mellops', written by Tomi Ungerer
I recently read an article on the Icelandic tradition of gifting a book on Christmas Eve and then spending the evening reading it. Isn't it such a lovely idea? The thought of each of us cosying up on Christmas Eve with the fire lit and the tree lights sparkling, reading a new book is just ...
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CELEBRATIONS
Thoughtful and beautiful gift boxes from The London Gifting Studio
To give, but mostly to receive a gift that was chosen with care, with love, with attention to detail, with just that extra something, is so, so special. A gift that has meaning, a purpose, that is (and becomes) an experience and a memory -- those kind of gifts are the best ones. But which busy parent has the ...
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CELEBRATIONS
First day of Advent (and the sweetest Christmas calendar from Fabelab)
Last year I blogged about our last minute advent calendar -- not a calendar filled with gifts and sweets, but one filled with little notes suggesting a daily activity to get us in the mood for Christmas. It was a huge success and a tradition was born, so I just (quite last minute again!) put ...
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CELEBRATIONS
Our Advent Activity Calendar
I loved Esther’s post last year about an Advent Activity Calendar! We have done a similar idea for a few years now (unfortunately not so beautifully designed!). I bought a Maileg Advent garland (a little bit like this one) and in every pocket the children find a sweet treat and an Advent activity for us ...
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BOOKS
Christmas Book Advent Calendar (Updated)
I wrote my first post for Babyccino on 29th November 2009 (I can’t believe it – almost 6 years ago!) and it was about an idea that I had to wrap up 24 Christmas themed books to create a Christmas Book Advent Calendar. Well the idea is still going strong in our house and as ...
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BABY
2015 Holiday Gift Guides now live!
Can you believe we're talking about the holidays already?!! I can hardly believe it's November and time to start thinking about holiday gift-buying. Sinterklaas arrives in The Netherlands in just over a month's time, Hannukah starts around that same time, and then Christmas comes just after that. It's time to get busy! The good news ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
Easter Craft: Hen Egg Cups
Easter holidays are here and I've prepared a new Easter craft for you. This one I absolutely love because it’s so very simple that even very young children can make it, and it takes very little time to finish so it’s also perfect for those types of kids that can’t stay still for very long, like ...
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BOOKS
6 Easter Book suggestions
1. The Golden Egg Book by Margaret Wise Brown Margaret Wise Brown is probably best known for Goodnight Moon but I prefer this story for Easter – a young bunny finds a curious object (an egg) and can hear some tapping inside it – what is it? The bunny sets to investigations – some of ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
The Little Things... making pompoms for a spring branches bouquet
For this The Little Things post, we've been making pompoms for an Easter Tree-inspired, spring branches bouquet. The great thing about making pompoms, is that it appeals to different ages, and both boys and girls absolutely love making them. Isn't there a magical attraction to wool? The moment I pull my suitcase with yarn leftovers ...
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