Angel Baby Blog

Just wanted to let everyone know about a Spring sale going on now at AngelHeadbands.com.  Everything in the store is an additional 10% off when you use the coupon code Jokesonus10 during checkout.  As an added bonus, spend fifty dollars and automatically receive free shipping on your entire order, within the United States.

Check out our special promotion on interchangeable headbands for babies and toddlers.  Right now, buy five assorted headbands and get one free waffle crochet headband, valued at seven dollars.  This is a great way to stock up on many colors of headbands so your child will always have hair accessories that match her outfits!

Also check out AngelHeadbands.com for bedroom accessories- including our new Butterfly or Rainbow Bed Canopies.  These are a super fun way to dress up a girl’s room and make her feel like a princess!

Spring is a great time to throw a garden tea party for your little girl and all of her friends.  Surprise them with fun dress up outfits to transform them into magical fairies with wings, tutus, flower wands, and flower halo headbands with ribbons streaming down their backs.  AngelHeadbands.com offers many colors and styles to choose from, and with our Spring Easter sale, throwing a magical party is also budget friendly!

Remember, just enter this coupon code at checkout for an additional ten percent off your entire order, and get free shipping on orders over fifty dollars!  Jokesonus10 This is not an April Fool’s Joke!

It’s here already– the beginning of the holiday season! First we have Halloween with all of it’s frivolous and fun traditions. Next is Thanksgiving with formal parties and feasts galore, and then all of the winter holidays and New Year’s with their rich traditions and celebrations.

Among all of the holiday preparations there is the task of finding the perfect outfit for each special occasion. Halloween requires a costume of course, whether an elaborate fairy princess costume complete with princess gown, magic wand, fairy wings, a crown or tiara and a princess cape to keep her warm, or a simple ballerina costume with a fluffy tutu. You can find a lot of fun costume dress up outfits and festive accessories at www.AngelHeadbands.com.

The more formal holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, etc., also require dressing up. This is why AngelHeadbands.com has just opened a new line of formal wear for girls and boys. You can find adorable fancy dresses for little girls to wear to parties, concerts, recitals, dances, festivals and more.

You will also find our brand new line of boys tuxedos and suits. These tuxes and suits come complete with jacket, shirt, bow tie or regular tie, cummerbund or vest, and pants. Your little boys can now match your little girls in style! We also have the perfect shoes available to match these suits, so you can pick up the whole ensemble for a fraction of department store prices.

Our new line of tuxedos, vest sets, and church or business style suits are available in baby sizes through boys size twenty (20), so you will find the perfect size for any boy you are shopping for, and they are available in several different colors as well to match any event or occasion.

And of course, AngelHeadbands.com always wants to give you the best prices out there, so you can be assured that you are getting a great deal on great quality items.

Enjoy this holiday season and all of the fun parties and events that come along with it, and enjoy having your kids well dressed in costume or formal attire.

Children love playing and letting their imaginations run wild. To help boost your child’s creativity you probably buy toys, games, arts and crafts supplies, and numerous other items to help keep your child occupied and learning in a fun way. Here’s a great idea that is sure to become a favorite: Build or fill up a dress up trunk for your children.

Children are great imitators. They love to dress up like their favorite cartoon character, hero, storybook character or wherever their imagination carries them. One important part of any child’s toy collection is a dress up trunk!

This can be simple, such as old Halloween costumes placed in a box. A more organized and thought out dress up play corner can be made by purchasing a trunk or other container and filling it with hats, gloves, beads, boas, masks, wigs, lab coats, tutus, fancy dresses, bow ties, regular ties, shoes, firemen and policemen costumes, etc.

This trunk can be the starting point of many childhood adventures and family play times. Mom and Dad can get involved by helping the children to dress up and act out a story, poem or nursery rhyme.
Children learn so much through their play. Dress up play can add significantly to a child’s imagination and sense of self.

Angelheadbands.com is a great place to purchase some of the fancy finery that makes a dress up trunk so much fun! Check out their collection of fairy princess halo headbands, tutus, and fancy dresses—and get ready for endless hours of fun!

A couple of days ago we undecorated for Christmas. It’s kind of a sad day, but on the flip side it’s also nice to get the house back in order. The kids thought it was great fun to take all of the ornaments off of the Christmas tree and fit them back into their boxes. They watched as each string of lights was wound up and unplugged, and then our three year old got lifted up to take the star off the top of the tree. Growing up I always had a real tree, so after Christmas was over we would take it to a tree recycling place and watch it get chipped up for compost. Now we have an artificial tree, so the kids helped scrunch the branches and put it away in it’s box until next year.

After the tree was down we took down the empty stockings, put away the nativity, wrapped up the snow globe, unwound the garlands and put away the Christmas dishes. When we were done my husband and I looked around the living room and said “Hmm, it’s boring in here now.” Five minutes after the excitement of taking everything down was over our little boy came to us and said “We need the Christmas tree back up!” We told him that it would have to wait for next year and there are lots of fun times between now and then… but still we are kind of left with an empty after the holidays feeling.

Our cozy living room, although nicely decorated, is back to being just the same as it always is. The kitchen is no longer full to the brim with holiday treats (our waists are thanking us). And the kids are back on a normal day to day routine instead of on holiday/vacation craziness. There are plenty of new toys and books lining the shelves and scattered on the floor. Snow is still falling every couple of days- just enough to keep it cold and white outside. But, there’s something about January that can just make us stir-crazy inside the house.

So, how to beat the January doldrums? Kids get bored of being cooped up in the house 99 percent of the time, especially little ones who aren’t in school yet, with too much free time on their hands. I think that children need a lot of structured play instead of an afternoon for nothing but a pile of toys or television or computer games. I’ve made my New Year’s resolution– I’m going to devote more of my time to really play with my kids, who are all toddlers at this time, teach them new and exciting things and help them to develop interests and favorite activities and games.

Where to begin… One of my favorite magazines is Family Fun. It’s issues are usually full of fun activities and projects appropriate for many different age groups. They have a great website where you can search for and find practically anything. Check out www.familyfun.go.com for lots of ideas to keep your little ones busy for the rest of the winter.

Another great place to find ideas (and to spend an entire morning or afternoon in the process) is to visit your local library. A lot of libraries schedule story times for different age groups– start with that and then browse for activity books or fun books for you and your kids to read together.

Check out local attractions like you’re a tourist. Every city has fun things to see and do– you just have to find them. For example, I’ve lived in the same city for the last ten years and never knew until last year that there was an aquarium only 20 minutes away. It’s now one of our favorite places to go and explore. The kids love seeing all of the exotic and local fish. Other places to see might be historical sites in your own hometown, museums, art galleries, the zoo (they say the animals are more active when it’s cold outside), or a nice sledding hill after a snowstorm.

We did something crazy the other day– it had just snowed but it was only about 15 degrees outside, so much too cold to go out and play. The kids were looking out the window longingly at the drifts of snow just begging to be played in. So, we took some big plastic mixing bowls from the kitchen, filled them to the brim with snow, set them and the boys on the tile floor and gave them spoons and measuring cups and let them have at it. For the next hour, while the snow was slowly melting, they had a blast! They got their hands good and cold, made a nice wet mess on the floor (that was easy to mop up with a sponge), and laughed and had the time of their lives.

Not all winter-boredom-busting ideas have to be expensive, out of the house, or time-consuming for the parents. Let me know what you do with your children when they get bored with a comment.

What better way to start a New Year and a new life than to be born at 12:01 am on the morning of January 1, 2008? Across the world there are prizes given to the first baby born in the New Year– everything from Savings bonds donated by local banks, bouquets of flowers or free diapers given by the hospital, manicures and donuts for the new mom, and gift certificates for dinners out and baby gear. It seems that every hospital across the country has special gifts set aside for that lucky first baby born after the stroke of midnight.

Some have asked why prizes aren’t given to the last baby born of the year and why the first baby is more special. Well, the answer is that the baby isn’t more special because she was born a minute after midnight instead of a minute before. Every baby is just as special and unique, but the way we calculate time and days, the rollover of a New Year traditionally is a big deal– and what better way to ring in the New Year than with a new life.

The parents of a baby born on December 31 have the prize of getting a tax deduction for that year. The parents of a baby born on January 1, unless they schedule a C-section delivery to be completed at exactly the stroke of midnight, don’t have any say as to what day or time their child will be born. But why not reward that hard work that delivered the baby precisely after midnight with a little extra gift, more than just the joy of looking into the newborn’s face and welcoming the baby into the world.

So, would I plan my pregnancy to have a due date of January 1, 2008 and schedule my labor to be induced in the hopes of winning the prize and the prestige and the fifteen minutes of fame for my newborn? Not a chance– because any day that a baby is born is a special and wonderful day and a new beginning for a new life. Of course, if the hospital still wanted to give me a year’s supply of free diapers I wouldn’t complain!

Let me know how you feel about the New Year’s baby tradition with a comment. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Nothing is quite as exciting as watching children at Christmas time. This morning I had the pleasure of witnessing the pure joy of innocence as my three year old really was able to anticipate Santa’s arrival and woke up so excited. He woke up and the first thing he said was “Did Santa come to our house? Did he bring presents? Can I go and see him?” He thought Santa was going to stay at our house after making his deliveries.

Our 20 month old is too little to really understand everything that’s going on, but he caught on to the present opening and new toys really fast and was so excited every time we put another present in front of him. The toys he was happiest with and carried around the longest were the simplest toys that Santa had brought– a little toy truck and a suction-cup ball that sticks to any hard surface. He walked around the house saying “Ball, car, ball, car!”

As a parent the thing I want most for Christmas is for my kids to be able to have those happy memories that I remember from my own childhood. Christmas has a different meaning for me now that I have kids- it’s no longer about what I want or what I get surprised with. It’s all about making Christmas magical for my children so I can see their happy faces and tell them how much I love them.

This year I also had the opportunity to help with a project to bring Christmas to homeless children in our community. I got to organize the making of 200 Christmas stockings in an organization of women in my neighborhood. It was a neat experience to watch a couple dozen women donate supplies, money, time and creativity to the project, all for children they would probably never meet.

This was just another reminder to me that Christmas is a time to think beyond ourselves and reach out to love the world. Whether this is a community project or within the walls of our own homes, I think every person can make a huge difference in the world. Merry Christmas!

Leave a comment to let me know how your Christmas was.

A few days ago I asked my 3 year old son where Santa was and what he was doing. He said “Santa’s at the North Pole and he’s making toys.”

I said “That’s right. Is Santa going to come to our house and bring you presents and fill up your stocking?”

He said “Nope. The mailman is going to go to the North Pole and get all the presents and bring them to our mailbox.”

Well, that would certainly make Santa’s job easier, but look out mail carriers– your Christmas Eve delivery schedule could get even more crazy! We finally convinced our toddler that Santa would bring the presents down the chimney himself, but we’ve been laughing about the inventiveness of our kids since that incident.

I’m sure everyone has stories like this to tell. Please share them with a comment.