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Strollerderby
For their birthdays this year, my kids got stuffed animals. No simple teddy bear, these handmade monstrosities looked like something straight out of Frankenstein’s lab.
Of course, the girls love them. A kitten with a dragon’s tail and flower petals for wings faces down a sock monkey with horns in their bedroom every night.
Freaky stuffed animals aren’t just for kids, of course. Jezebel recently shone a spotlight on some down-right R-rated ones. Friends of mine have collections of plush illnesses like herpes.
Weird plush things are adorable, unusual, and a hit at birthday parties no matter how many candles are on the cake. They’re also a fun D.I.Y. project.
You don’t have to be a crafty genius to make a memorable stuffed toy.
MomLogic reports that AshleyMadison.com, the dating site for married people, sees it’s second-biggest surge in women signing up the day after Mother’s Day.
Apparently, when women don’t get pampered enough by their husbands on Mother’s Day, they go looking elsewhere on Monday morning.
The Grinch is alive and well and living in suburban New Orleans, it seems. One or more people threw a cement block through the window of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Violet, broke in, and stole 60 Christmas presents the parishioners collected for needy children.
Not only that, but they ripped off the wrapping and left it piled around the altar. From the story linked, it doesn’t appear that anything else was taken although the thieves attempted to break in to several lockers. Continue reading »
Toys don’t actually need to be awesome to be hot. Take the Pet Rock, for example, which turned it’s inventor into a millionaire in roughly six months. A millionaire! For selling people rocks.
I’m not really sure what makes a new toy hot, what makes people do just about anything to get their hands on it, for $10 toys to go for hundreds on eBay. But as Time magazines list of the top 10 toys crazes points out, even alleged contamination with toxic chemicals (since found to be false) can’t stop a hot toy trend once it starts. Here’s their list:
It’s easy to tell when your kids don’t like a gift. Three-year-olds just don’t have the grace to tell Grandma they’d rather have a Transformer than yet another pair of pajamas. They just throw it across the room and then go and pout behind the Christmas tree (unless you’ve managed to teach them some manners by then).
But at some point in our lives, maturity requires we be a little more civilized. Sure, we may not like/understand/be able to identify a gift, but grace requires that we smile and be grateful anyway.
Thus, Present Face.
Last year, my then three-year-old wanted one thing for Christmas: Groovy Girls. Groovy Girl dolls, Groovy Girl beds, Groovy Girl cars. One look at the prices left me a little dizzy, until I got the idea to look them up on Craigslist. Low and behold, there was an 11-year-old girl selling her entire collection. For $20.
You wouldn’t give your child a block of lead to suck on, right? Unfortunately, lots of toy manufacturers would. Hidden toxins in children’s toys continue to permeate holiday goodies. Kids inadvertently lay hands on chemicals ranging from lead and cadmium to BPA and phthalates when they show up in shiny new toys.
Consumer pressure over the last few years has prompted both legal reform and greater responsibility from companies. The folks at Healthy Stuff tested this year’s popular holiday toys and found that contamination levels are down. The number of lead-laden toys was down 2/3 from 2007.
That other third includes items like a Dora the Explorer Activity Tote and Barbie Bike Flair Kit. Nice going, toymakers. These popular toys are over the legal limit for lead in toys. Not cool. Continue reading »
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