Kawaii Kids Just Got Cuter? Oh Yes!

Our friends at Kawaii Kids decided to raise the bar of fab and have recently introduced a new site focusing on Japanese and Korean stationary! I’m in HEAVEN!

Their offerings include notebooks, pen and pencils, pencil cases, decorative tape, stamp sets, stickers and gift cards, to name just a few. This type of stuff gets me REALLY SUPER EXCITED because when I was young, the highlight of my year was going to shop for new school supplies each September! I am still a total sucker for a stationary store. If these kinds of notepad and pencil cases had existed when I was growing up, I would have lost my mind.

I’m loving this notebook (which comes with stickers!):



And this one:


“It is a doll of very lovely magic.” I love it SO much!

When I was a little girl I was sooooo into pencil cases, I would have gone crazy for these guys that look like little milk boxes:



Check out this kitty cat deco tape:



Rabbit Bandit sticky notes!



Hello future stamper set:



Yes please. I’d use this letter set for myself:



I love this little monster notecard. I think he loves me too!


(Julia just walked by and said “Oh that’s cute!”)

Once again, there are infinitely more darling things than I can share with you here, so go give them a visit to get the full view!

Have a great weekend and come back for International Week England next Monday!!

Eeboo Games = Rad

Julia gets one Easter present from Mom and Dad, in addition to her basket from the Easter bunny – this year we got her this game:





Game play involves spinning numbers on the spinner, moving the appropriate amount of spaces while players gather and ‘plant’ a fruit, a veggie, an herb, a flower and a bird. The first person to successfully gather all their needed garden items and return to their plot wins.

Very appropriate for this time of year! This is my second Eeboo board game purchase. We also have this memory game, which we adore:



By the way, there is nothing like playing Memory with a small child to make you feel realllly old and like dementia is knocking at your door – Julia routinely kicks our booties playing Memory, and believe me, I really try to win!

What I love about Eeboo games is how beautiful they are – really well constructed and non flimsy, gorgeous bright colors with detailed and eye catching illustrations.

I found a local store that carried a huge amount of Eeboo games, check out what I mean about the color --

For the kids who love their buggies:



Adorable.



LOVE these old fashionedy animal pictures!





I’ve had my eye on their version of Bingo for awhile. . . .



Does this remind anyone else of the dogs-playing-poker picture???

These two games I hadn’t seen before, they look great:





Eeboo also makes super cute growth charts:





In addition, Eeboo makes party games, travel games, lacing cards and puzzles!

I checked around on the pricing, Amazon seems to have the best deals. You can also find Eeboo games here as well. If you are interested in high quality, durable and fun games, at some point you have to check out Eeboo!

Bunnies Do the Darndest Things

Sooooooo, I hope I don’t offend anyone here, but I must show you this drawing my kiddo did last year – it’s so incredible I photographed it and saved it to share with the world:


It’s the Easter Bunny. Going to the bathroom.

Here’s another rendition:


Such an amazing subject bears repeating, yes?

Want to see a video game with nothing but rude, nasty and maniacal little bunnies? Was that a YES? Okey dokey:


Julia thinks this game is HILARIOUS. Thanks to my brother for bringing this little ray of sunlight into our lives. J says she likes this game “because the bunnies walk around with little toilet plungers.”

ME: Andrew, would you kindly explain the game play in this fine video game?

MY HUSBAND: I don’t think that game is very good, honestly. But our kid thinks the bunnies are funny. Basically, you find a different bunch of ways to abuse the bunnies. There’s a lot of ‘humor’ involved with plungers, you make them dance around to little dance routines – it’s a bunch of mini games involving bad bunnies. It’s all very confusing and doesn’t really make any sense.

ME: I love those crazy bunnies!! They are SUPER FUNNY.

MY HUSBAND: Yes, I have noticed that your humor and our daughter's are on the same level.

Say what? Doesn’t everyone find bad bunnies and plungers totally funny? Just me??



And we wonder why our child draws pictures of bunnies sitting on toilets???

Rayman Raving Rabbids is available for the Wii, Nintendo DS, Playstation 2 and X-Box.

And I haven’t actually read this book, but I may have to seek it out at the library:


Richard Scarry, check. Misbehaving bunny, check. Sounds like a book for us!! Watch out for all those BAD BUNNIES!

Bunnies, Bunnies Everywhere

We’ve been decorating the house for Easter! My kiddo is outraged that I had the audacity to pull some stuffed animals out and decorate the window ledge with them.

“Those are my TOYS!!”

Well yeah. And now they’re also decorations! And they have been at the bottom of the stuffed animal basket. Why are kids so . . .how kids are??





Grandma brought Mr. and Mrs. Bunny over a couple weeks ago:



Bless your heart Grandma.

Because if it’s one thing we were in short supply of around here, it’s stuffed animals! I’d really like to put a stop to the Stuffed Animal Madness, but the stuffed animals clearly are in league with Hello Kitty and her superpowers of mind control.

The bunnies I’ve shown are a very teensy sampling of what’s actually stored here, there and everywhere:



That whole crazy rabbit-breeding thing? It happens amongst the stuffed variety as well!

And apparently the books are multiplying too, because we have a WHOLE LOT O’ BUNNY BOOKS! What’s cool about these bunny books, is that many we read ALL YEAR LONG. Julia loooves bunnies and she loooooves Easter and requests the Easter books even in the middle of winter.

This one is a special favorite combining J’s dinosaur love with her love for Easter:



Peter Cottontail has a sniffle, so T-Rex decides to help him out (they are buddies, turns out). Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and Iguanadon then decide to help out T-Rex when his egg painting/delivering plans go awry.





At the end, everyone gets a chicky and is Supremely Happy. Even the Easter Bunny!

Julia enjoys naughty bunnies as well:



Did you ever think Beatrix Potter and Tyra ('show me fierce’) Banks would ever have anything in common?

This is a baaaaaaaad bunny.





Now for the more gentle of you in Blogland, there is a hunter who fires his gun and SOMEHOW (it’s very vague and unclear) the bad bunny and his puffy tail become separated. Beatrix was clearly familiar with KARMA. You go Beatrix!

So today the grand lesson is Beatrix Potter+Tyra Banks+Bunnies=EASTER FIERCENESS!

Kawaii Kids = Cutest Stuff I’ve Seen Lately!

Guess what Julia and I found at the library?



And oh wow, this video is SO sweet and adorable and precious and we’re going to watch it at least 75 quatramillion times!! (that’s even more than gamillion)

So I am Super Extremely Excited to let you all know that Julia’s Bookbag has its very first advertiser!

Kawaii Kids is a site that seriously made my pulse quicken:



The second I saw the Extreme Coolness that is their online shop, I knew the stuff they’re into was a great match with the stuff we’re into! I am so thrilled to have their darling ad featured on our site!

First of all, how cute is that name?? No, not Hawaii, not Kauai, it’s KAWAII !!!! Love it. Kawaii is actually the Japanese word for cute!



Get ready for some bolding and italicizing:

When I saw their website, I thought “It’s like someone crawled inside my mind and then made a children’s website based on all the things I like or would like to have!!”

Do you need an exercise book? (I much prefer that to notebook, don’t you?)



Or how about adorable bookends? (For your exercise books!!)



This strawberry dress is going on Julia, mark my words:



And I am just fainting at how darling this unicorn shirt is:



When school starts again in the fall, I think a new lunchbox might be in order:



Flying monkey PJ’s anyone?



Little monster socks I think would make EVERYONE happy:



And this adorable corduroy bag is on sale and I love it:



It would be a great little book bag!!

SOOOOOOO, I could sit here all day showing you all what I think is cute and fun, but a better idea would be for YOU to go check out Kawaii Kids!! Have a great weekend!

FAIRIES!!!!!

Those ninjas yesterday were a mighty terrifying lot weren’t they?? I thought it would be nice to talk about some lovely fairies!

I ADORE FAIRIES and was utterly convinced until about age 12 that the fairies would come for me and take me away to Fairyland. I still kind of think that if I were looking in just the right spot in the British Isles, I might see one. So I wasn’t very surprised when this:


appeared in our home last year. Julia wasn’t surprised either. FAIRIES ARE EVERYWHERE!

The fairies leave notes from time to time, and on holidays and birthdays, they leave treats. Sometimes, little handmade fairy books:


OK, why didn’t the fairies move into MY house when I was young?? This little book was Very Easy for the “fairies” to put together BTW! The fairies looked up cute fairy images online, printed them out and stapled together!

We collect little, pretty rocks so that we can make our own fairy circles:



Santa Claus brought Julia this stunningly gorgeous book during the holidays:


It’s about two girls, Grace and Evie, who discover that fairies are living in and around their home:


The pictures are pop-up interactive and reveal secret sights and appearing/disappearing pixies:



Wow, let me tell you that the Amazon price beats the pants off what I paid for it at an independent toy store! Oh well.

This book is so beautiful, I would consider it a Special Event Book worthy of a holiday or birthday gift. Or for “I Love Fairies Day”. (Don’t you know about those??)

This game was also a Christmas gift in Julia’s stocking:


It’s basically Old Maid in reverse – the whole deck is dealt to the players, you find matching pairs and lay them down – if you have no cards to match you pick a card up –and whoever has the Fairy Queen at the end is the winner! It can also be played as a Memory game.


Totally gorgeous, totally fun.


We’ll be talking about fairies again down the road, BELIEVE IT!

(I honestly cannot remember the name of the “fairy supplier” of our door, but this Etsy shop has the closest approximation. Also, do a Google search for “Fairy door” and more options will magically appear!)