shopping

Shout Out — Diaper Cake Genie

Posted by Michelle on Feb 3, 2011 in shopping | 1 comment

When it comes to new baby gifts, I’m a spoilsport when it comes to the so-called “must haves.” Out of all the things we received while I was pregnant with The Little Empress, I think the things that we used the most included the basics like towels, blankets and of course, diapers. (Good gravy, will the diapers never end?!)

If there’s one gift that I desperately wanted to receive at my baby shower (but didn’t) it was a diaper cake. I love the idea of a diaper cake because it combines all the best and most useful gifts for new parents all in a cute little presentation. As it so happens, my bestie from Junior High just started her own business called Diaper Cake Genie!

She makes some of the cutest diaper cakes I’ve seen! I mean, seriously, take a look at some of these diaper cakes…

Diaper Cake Genie -- Play With Me

Diaper Cake Genie -- Lily

Diaper Cake Genie - Little Bear Blue

Who wouldn’t want these on the gift table at a baby shower? They make even me, Ms. “USABLE GIFTS ONLY!!!” melt in a pile of “Aww, baby!” goo. Adorable and useful. Love that combo. Plus? She ships all over the US.

Here’s my card…

Posted by Michelle on Mar 9, 2009 in Life, Parenting, shopping, WAHM | 3 comments

Despite approaching 6 months of freelance work, would you believe I don’t have a business card? Uh, yeah. Smart. Actually, I did print up some business cards to hand out quickly when I did local interviews but they are pretty damned sad looking so I thought it was high time to look into getting some more professional cards printed up.

Not-so-fun tidbit: Despite working for the majority of my IT career in Fortune 500 companies or subsidiaries, I never was given a business card. I mean, I could understand the fact that I wasn’t client facing but a little card to show off every now and then would have been kind of cool. However, I will note that what was worse was the fact that I worked for two years without a name plate on my cube because my direct manager was too cheap to get me one. Oddly, our intern got a name plate just not me. (Talk about feeling underappreciated. Yeesh.)

Anyway, as I was looking at business card designs, I came across Mommy Cards. Yup, they’re just what you’d think they are: they’re cards that Mommies (or Daddies or Grandparents) can give out to help exchange information while at the playground. I would have scoffed at these before having children but now, I think they’re actually kind of spiffy. I know that when I’m out and about with The Little Empress, sometimes I run into friendly parents. It would be nice to exchange information but constantly scurrying after the kidlet does make it a bit more difficult.

I’m curious to see what other mamas think. Good idea? Bad idea? What’s your take? Leave a comment and/or vote in the poll (I like polls!)

[poll id="2"]

Help! The playard ate the family room!

Posted by Michelle on Dec 21, 2008 in Parenting, Reviews, shopping | 1 comment

It seems that with each passing day, The Little Empress’ curiosity about the world grows. And with it grows her eagerness for crawling and roaming. She MUST play/inspect/chew ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that catches her fancy and god help you if you try to stop her. Keeping up with the whirlwind that is TLE has been difficult and she fast outgrew the playspace we had prepared for her in her nursery.

Since we hosted a playgroup at our house last Wednesday, I moved her playmat downstairs and assembled it to give the babies a nice spot to play on. Of course, all the kids tended to play anywhere BUT the playmat. Still, everyone had a grand old time and rather than disassembling the mat and dragging it back upstairs, I kept it downstairs for TLE to play on. She LOVED it. She never stayed on the mat either but it was clear that she needed far more than the measly 4×4 assembly in her nursery allowed her. But the living room wasn’t the most ideal place for her to play. The living room isn’t that well baby proofed and having such a huge amount of space meant that Mommy was being run ragged.

After some research, I decided to buy two Little Playzone portable playards to put in the family room. That way, I could sit on the couch and work on my laptop or sit in the playard and play with TLE or at least know she was secure there while I worked in the adjoining kitchen.

It arrived today and holy cow, it is HUGE! I knew it would take up a majority of the family room. There’s barely any space for the couch and chair but that’s okay. I’ll gladly trade legroom for peace of mind, knowing TLE has a nice, padded play area to play in. She loves it and there’s enough room for both Mommy and Daddy to play in the yard with TLE with all of her toys.

Here’s a couple shots of just how BIG this thing is. The Hubster ™ likes it so much that he thinks we should get two more — one for our office and another for our bedroom so that we can have a nice play area for TLE while I’m sewing.

Here comes the bag lady

Posted by Michelle on Dec 17, 2008 in Family, Parenting, shopping | 2 comments

Call me a tomboy but I’ve always been perfectly happy with just carrying my wallet, cell phone and keys in my pants pockets. (I still carry my keys in my pockets just in case I happen to lose my purse.) In the past few years, I’ve found the need to carry a few more things with me — oftentimes a PDA (back in the days when I carried one), camera (always with me), notebook and pen (ditto) and more recently, a voice recorder.

Despite my lack of bag carrying, my parents have always seen it fit to give me some type of designer bag for my birthday and/or Christmas. Don’t get me wrong — I’m grateful to my parents for spending the money to get me nice handbags but since I’m so far from girly, it kind of makes me wonder if their ulterior motive for buying me such girly presents as a handbag are to help awaken my slumbering girly-girl side?

Whoa, was that a tangent

Anyhow, as most every mom knows, a diaper bag becomes your out-and-about survival kit. Honestly, I dreaded the idea of carrying around a diaper bag. There’s something about being overburdened with baggage that annoys me and it seemed to me that a baby was enough to tote around. Luckily, on a maternity shopping trip we happened to find the  JJ Cole Logic bag which The Hubster ™ promptly dubbed the “Mommy Commando” bag. As far as diaper bags go, I love, love, love this bag. It is small and utilitarian and held Just Enough ™ for our former needs. It did well for very quick trips as well as babywearing.

While I still do a lot of babywearing at home, I don’t necessarily wear The Little Empress everywhere we go anymore. For example, grocery shopping is MUCH easier done with her in the cart. Up until now, I’ve had her in a back carry in our SSC (Pikkolo). These days, she’s prone to grabbing at things without me being able to effectively stop her as well as arching her back when upset. Plus bending over isn’t always easy when she’s on my back.

But more importantly, TLE’s needs are changing. The days of being able to run out with our Mommy Command bag ™ with just a pack of wipes, diaper and maybe a change of clothes has disappeared. These days, TLE needs toys to keep her occupied on car trips which she may or may not nap during, snacks if we’re going out to eat with her in tow and all the accessories (and cleanup items!) to go along with that.

I currently have two dedicated diaper bags — one was a formula maker freebie that came with the mail and another is a pink paisley bag that my mother got for me on Mother’s Day. I can see why my mom chose pink; I’ve gone so overboard with the pink with TLE that I’ve pretty much guaranteed that she’ll harbor a seething hatred for the color once she’s old enough. Though I’m not sure what made her decide that paisley was a good pattern to gift me with. Yikes.

So now I am in the process of debating what type of diaper bag to get. There are so many choices that it makes my head spin. While I’ve been looking at various diaper bags, I haven’t forgotten the great suggestion that  Cousin L gave me while I was pregnant — to carry around the necessities in clear vinyl pouches and then just pop the pouches into the bag of choice. This way, there’s no need for a dedicated “diaper bag” when you can so easily convert another bag. (And these days, isn’t one of the selling points of diaper bags is that it doesn’t look like one?) I am leaning towards this choice if only I could find a bag that I’d like. I am a messenger bag kind of person but am also considering just a plain backpack.

The Hubster ™ however had a different suggestion.

The Hubster ™: Hey, why don’t you just use my XBox 360 bag?
Me: … you’ve gotta be kidding.
The Hubster ™: C’mon, it carried around my 360! It’d be plenty big enough to be a diaper bag.
Me: … dude, that is so gamer geek. Besides, we don’t have a 360 anymore.
The Hubster ™: Which is why it hasn’t been used much.
Me: I dunno. It gives me the feeling of “this baby sponsored by Microsoft!”
The Hubster ™: We could slap a Playstation 3 logo over it?
Me: No.

It never fails…

Posted by Michelle on Dec 12, 2008 in Parenting, shopping | 2 comments

No sooner than we buy the Superyard XT at our local Babies R Us do I find an alternative that’s really awesome: Little Playzone. It has kid friendly colors, a doorway and flashing lights and sound to entertain the little ones (as well as drive Mommy and Daddy nuts, I’m sure) for around the same price as the Superyard XT.

Hmm. I wonder if The Hubster(tm) would agree to returning the Superyard XT and order this from Amazon instead. *sigh* I really like the doorway aspect of this play enclosure though reports do say it is pretty small. Then again, the portion of TLE’s bedroom that we’d be walling off is also pretty small so maybe there’s no real need.

But dude… flashing lights! Flashing lights make all toys better!