baby-patch.com

Travel Mugs are an excellent advertisement tool. All you have to do is provide a few to some key team members and you can be assured that the mugs will be used time and time again. The good news is that the insulated mugs will get used on the job and off. And the more places the travel mugs go the more places they will be seen. It’s almost like having an entire advertising team working for you without pay. In fact, your team members will be happy to do this easy marketing for you because they don’t have to do anything except drink from a very nice mug.

If you decide to ‘go big’ and provide Travel Mugs for all your staff or as a give-away item during a special campaign or promotion you will have even more free marketing happening for you and your business. This is not the kind of promotional give away item that gets tossed in the can as your potential customers walk out the door. They will use their mug regularly and just as your own employees have become an unpaid advertising team, so will they.

Promotional mugs can help you feel better in another way too. We’ve all heard about global warming and the problems our environment is facing. Are you doing your part to ‘go green’? Customized promotional mugs help save the environment by decreasing the need for paper, plastic, and Styrofoam cups. Plus, the insulated mugs help keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold. This not only means the drinks are kept at an ideal temperature, but because the ice lasts longer, we use less. Once again, we are being kinder to the environment.

When you consider promotional items it is sometimes difficult to come up with an item that is appreciated by the masses. But whether it’s coffee, tea, water, soda, or something else, we all drink something several times a day. A customized insulated mug makes the ideal promotional tool.

The travel mugs are available in various materials and many even allow for full-color, photo realistic images. Quality Logo Products offers a wide selection of insulated mugs. Check the site out for details.

A holiday treasure box is a great momento of your holiday for your children.  It will keep them occupied and involved in your trip or holiday.  Any sort of box can be used, we found plastic boxes with compartments in them, but a cardboard box could also be used.  Encourage your child to collect ‘treasures’ along your trip such as:

• beach shells
• rocks
• tickets
• feathers
• brochures
• sand

The type of holiday you have will determine the items in the treasure box, but what every your child wants to collect should be encouraged.  He / she can enjoy sorting through their treasures on the trip and then back at home after.

For other fun toddler activies visit baby-patch

Jen

You better hurry for this great holiday offer, $500 to spend at ToysRUs.  Just click here to get your gift card.  I am not sure how long this offer will be avaliable so you better hurry!  (for US Residents Only)

Jen

Many of our friends said we were crazy to plan a 3 week camping trip with a 20 month old and 3.5 year old - but we all had a ball.  Driving 5000km around Western Australia was awesome, we camped mainly in caravan parks to give us access to amenities and only ‘bush’ camped for a few nights.  We planned ahead and had lots of activities for the long road trips, some of the things that kept us sane were:

• A child friendly map of the trip that our 3 year old could place a sticker on each destination once we reached it
• A bag of small gifts for both children that could be pulled out and given to them to play with in the car (these were rationed to last the whole trip)
• “tickets” for each long trip, for a 500km trip the kids got 5 tickets stappled together - once we completed 100km they exchanged a ticket for a lolly and could count the number of tickets left giving them a sense of how much longer we had to go.  This worked really well.
• Lots of music and audio books
• General car games like ‘Spotto” and 20 questions

Our kids loved sleeping in a tent, once the novelty wore off they went to sleep without a problem and we all managed to have a great trip.

Jen

I have just come accross Monkey Muffs for babies and children. I have never heard of these before but my friend uses them with her daughter and she is a real fan. Monkey muffs protect babies and children’s hearing, they work well to keep your baby asleep when your out and are great for plane trips. They are designed to block out harmful noise levels and sounds but not ambient noises.

Check out www.monkeymuffs.com

Jen

Get your free baby samples and coupons by following this link. Choose from free diapers, free formula, free parenting magazines and much more!

For other great offers visit our free baby stuff page!

Jen

I have just finished reading “Siblings Without Rivalry How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too” By Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish, I can not recommend this book highly enough.

It is a very practical and easy approach to disciplining and dealing with children and gives you hands on advice and ideas of how to bring up your children so that they have the best chance of having a good relationship with eachother. Faber and Mazlish write in an open and approachable manner that does not leave you with unanswered questions but rather tools to deal with the challenges of sibling relationships.

This book is useful for all ages from toddlers, teenages to adults, but if you have the chance to read the book while your children are still young and you apply what you learn then you can really give your children an incredible opportunity to develop a solid relationship from the beginning.

A perfect mothers day gift, gift for mums birthday or for a second or third baby gift.

Jen

For more baby gift ideas visit baby-patch

Calling all cute babies and cute kids! There is only a month to go to enter the 2008 Cute Baby Photo Contest, it is easy to do and your child has the chance to win $25,000 for a College Tuition Fund!

So go for it!
Jen

If you are sick of being woken by your toddler at 5.30am why not give this a try….

Toddlers can have very good biological clocks and just seem to know when to get up in the morning, but sometimes their biological clock malfunctions and the household finds itself starting the day very early.

Up until 2.5 years Ben slept till 7am every morning, but when his sister, Emily came along he seemed to be getting up earlier and earlier until the norm was just too early for us. So we got a night light and put it on a timer to turn on at 7am. Each night before bed we would tell Ben that in the morning if the light is on he gets up but if the light is off he goes back to sleep.

It took a good couple of months before the message sunk in, lots of explainations, a few mornings of lying with Ben in his bed waiting for the light to come on and lots of praise when he waited for the light to come on. Now Ben gets up at 7am every morning again and the first thing he tells us is ‘my light came on!’.

If you are sick of early mornings why not give it a try and let us know how you go.

Jen

www.baby-patch.com

It is almost indescribable the pleasure Ben gets from our vegetable garden. When ever I am thinking about what to do next a simple visit to the garden to see if any of the tomatoes have turned red, or to see if the cucumbers have flowered or how far the beans have climbed fills in the time.

Ben is learning so much about how plants grow, he is able to see day by day the changes and developments in the garden - the flowers, the fruit and the caterpillars. He helps with the watering, planting, weeding and his favourite job is picking the ripe vegetable and eating it! The best thing is that he looks forward to eating the vegetables and they are so fresh and healthy for him. It also makes us spend more time outside being active in the garden.

I have to thank Chris as he has put in so much work to make the garden productive and we can all now enjoy the fruits of his labour. If you have the space and the time to set up a veggie garden, even a few pot plants it is so worthwhile and will add a whole new aspect to your toddlers life.

For more ideas of things to do with babies and toddlers visit our site
www.baby-patch.com

Jen Hart