The little party dress

Every little girl deserves a party dress to wear and feel the bee’s knee’s in.

The very lucky Danger baby and Naughty have an Annafie dress each that us Mummies have chosen with the help of both our terror’s.

The naughty, with her Mummies help, chose an Annafie, Amelie in blue flowers for her party dress to wear to her first proper party. The "do" was a civilised afternoon tea for her Aunty Flo’s hen do. She behaved impeccably with her aunties, aunty Flo’s friends, Grandma and Mum all looking on, while she happily munched her way through delicate sandwiches, scones and little pastries.  

While tea was served she played peekabo with Aunty Katie.

She read books with Mummy 

while tea was slurped and the 

nattering started.

She span around and danced while the ladies munched their sandwiches. She played Silvanian families while scones with cream and jam were scoffed. 

She ate afew naughty cakes while the silly stories were told.

And she even managed to get us all playing hide and seek while the little naughty sweet pastries were nibbled by all. The end of the day had everyone singing “The wheels on the bus” while we tried to make her smile for photo’s. 

By the end of the day when she was sleepy and played out she curled up like a sleeping lion with Aunty Katie.

The perfect day and the perfect little dress for a very good little girl. The perfect gift from Mummy to daughter.

All Annafie dresses are  hand smocked making them perfect for every little girls body shape. They all follow a traditional design and are perfect for today's little girls. Either worn like Ida's or worn with wellies to puddle jump in. For pre-walkers and tom-boy’s, Annafie will even make a romper style in one of the pretty floral fabrics to make it easier for crawling around. 

We hope you find your perfect dress like Ida has. 

Later this week i'll tell you what Danger baby does in her Annafie dress!

http://www.unikgifts.co.uk/clothing/clothing_annafie.php

There's lots of chocolate to be found at u-ni-k

Did you know it's National Chocolate week (like we needed an excuse!). Well we celebrate chocolate every day at u-ni-k.

OK I could fill this page with lots of lovely chocolate recipes but I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk a little bit about branding. No no no... don't run off.. it's an important part of starting a business. I promise to add in a chocolate recipe as well.

Branding is important. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. So how you name and brand your company should mean that people understand who you are and exactly what your company is about in a first glance.

Now when starting out u-ni-k, Anna and I spent many months discussing names before coming up with u-ni-k. Not that we were sure about u-ni-k, we knew we wanted to incorporate Ida and Kathryn in the name somehow and I'd penciled in InK but InK didn't tell people who we were and what we were about in that first impression. [Sam of course was still a twinkle in the eyes of his parents so we didn't have to try for the S... or we could have been Sink!]

So here are the questions we asked ourselves [taken from our meeting minutes]:

Create a fictional bio for your brand / company. What are they like? What values does it have?

What does your brand want from life? What are their motivations? What bugs them? What’s important? 

Trigger the right connections, what words are going to trigger a response from your future customers?

What brands would our future customers already trust?

Is there anything we can “borrow” from these brands?

ABOVE ALL ELSE: Be focused and specific: a company or product that tries to satisfy everyone, satisfies no one.

So here we are, an online resource for unique children's gifts, called u-ni-k gifts. Did we succeed in naming our company correctly? Are you aware of who we are and what we do? Are our values clear? Do drop us a line and let us know how we did, we're always happy for some feedback.

What happened to the chocolate I promised you?! Oh yes, this is the more subtle part of our branding. We don't have the word 'Children' in our company name, OK so we have it as part of our strap line but we don't use our strap line very much. So where's the reference to children?

Instant chocolate mess?
Just add a grandparent!

Ever wondered where the u-ni-k chocolate hand is from? A lot of thought went into that colour. If a child mixes all the paints together – what colour is formed? If a child squeezes together all the play doh or plasticine? What colour do you get?

Anyone who has a little person in their life or has given a small child a square of chocolate will be more than familiar with the u-ni-k colour. Yes, those chocolate handprints would remind any parent or grandparent of a time when there were lots of brown handprints to be found all over the house!

So I used Kathryn's handprints & footprints from when she was 3months old and used photoshop to colour them that lovely chocolate brown!

To celebrate chocolate here's my favourite chocolate brownie recipe:

250g butter

200g dark chocolate

80g coco powder (or hot chocolate powder)

65g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

360g caster sugar

4 large eggs

Heat oven to 180C

Grease and line a baking tray

Melt the chocolate and butter (you can do this in a microwave or in a bowl over simmering water – results are the same).

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

Add the chocolate / butter mix to the bowl and mix

Beat the eggs and add them to the bowl

Mix well – leave some lumps and bumps if you like.

Pour them into the tray and bake for about 25mins.

ENJOY!

PS

You can add nuts if you like but then they are not so baby friendly!

Indoor games for outdoor babies

Baby in a 'tent'

Dens

Probably the most obvious game we can play and as you know our Shuktara blanket comes into it's own for making dens. The light dapples through the patchworked colours making lovely dark and light contrasts that you can spot through the patterns. We LOVE the way it drapes, better than any synthetic parachute that we've played with at toddler groups.

Hide and Seek

A firm favourite as long as Kathryn is the one to hide, although don't take too long finding her as 'chase me' is also a good game as you run back to your hiding place. A quick dash around the side of the larder or open door, a little face peeking around at you for the 'peekaboo!'. So much giggling...

Make a rainbow

Colour me beautiful?!

Out comes the art mat, a plain canvass mat that's waterproof on one side and an empty canvass on the other. It's time to put Mummy's art supplies to good use... I can recommend pastels for those under 2, as long as you don't mind the mess. We mixed colours on the paper with our hands and then looked at our hands to see the result! Such a pretty mixture of colours, our own private rainbows.

Baking

Well, mixing cornflour and water together. If you get it just right then you have a watery paste that will pour but will not be pushed. Drop a few pieces of food dye on to it and watch the colours swirl. Try to mix it together and it crumbles?! A hard one for an adult to understand and magic to the baby.

Bubbles

Washing up has never been so fun! A sink full of bubbles, a saucepan that needs cleaning... around and around with the bubbly brimful of soap suds. Messy work, as both Mummy and baby will be damp but the washing up gets done.

Egg hole can also be peeked through

What noise does this make?

Our knitted friends and breakfast boards have come in to their own. Into a box they go, baby picks one out and Mummy says 'It's a bunny, bunny goes hop hop!' or “It's a chicken, chicken's go cluck cluck”. The knitted animals are soft to the touch and usually come out of the box first but Kathryn loves to peek through the 'eye' on the breakfast board and tries to say 'Meow' with me.

Twist vs Pull

A collection of old bottles washed clean and ready for recycling are all that's needed for this game. Some twist but some pull, which is it? Try them both and watch the squeals of delight when the top finally comes off... 'POP' shout Mummy and baby when the cap is finally released. Same game in reverse to put the top back on (Twist or Push!).

Slow boat to China

Is your Summer holiday suitcase still waiting to be put away? Well for someone small it can become a boat to an adventure. Quick put in some T-Shirts and other essentials (anything baby wants to put in) and climb on in. Most suitcases can be pushed forwards and backwards like they're on a rocky sea. Don't forget to sing those sea shanties... “A sailor went to sea, sea, sea to see what he could see see see but all that he could see see see was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea”.

Enjoy your time indoors!

[Turns out DangerBaby is not allergic to the garden – YAY! We've picked up a virus that's currently spreading around Surrey; similar to baby hand foot and mouth but not the same virus. http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/health/handfootmouth/ 

Thank you to all the Mummies that contacted us with helpful information and support. Very very appreciated]