Congratulations to Karen Langridge of Gwynedd, who has won herself a brand new Prima Pappa Evo highchair from Mamas & Papas.

If you didn’t win, keep your eyes peeled as we have new competitions arriving soon – A supply of the truly fabulous Wiona nappies are up next, followed by an incredible Harewood Cotbed in time for Christmas :)

We were out in the woods this weekend, and the boys started to collect leaves for an autumn collage they had big plans to make over half term.
But if there’s one thing the Quinny is not suited for, it’s collecting large amounts of crunchy foliage. But a rapid rummage in the caboodle produced the go-anywhere Onya bag.
A-Ha!
Three happy boys promptly set about filling it with large amounts of woodland, and i;m happy to say it took them a VERY long time… though even the Onya was defeated by the bracken stems…
Oh, and that’s joe pushing – and Ella is in there…

Tomy have asked us to review this seasons Top Gifts, along with a couple of items for the soon-to-be-unleashed new look review section. The Musical Bubble Thomas is already gaining covetous looks from Toby, and the Swap n Roll snail had Ella entranced instantly.

Review, as always, to follow, but we’re liking these so far!

We’re sooo excited – it’s been a really great week for LittleStuff. Firstly we have heard today that Tomy, Lindam and Hippychick ALL want to have their products featured on our monstrously popular review pages.
Their comments have been fantastic: Lizzie from Lindam wrote that LittleStuff is ‘great, really personable and witty. A nice change from a lot of others…. and very adorable babies!’

But not only are we excited about the big brands joining the LittleStuff house, and are loving what we do – more importantly to us a couple of mums have taken the trouble to write and tell us what they think:

Nicola wrote and told us “…The reviews are great too. The pair of you have me nearly wetting myself – not a hard task at the moment in fairness, in my very-pregnant state. You make me chuckle while eating my lunch!!”

Polly told us ‘…the reviews – interesting, hilarious and we can all relate to so much of it. Loved the mentioning of mini-drama involving tab coming off a brand new nappy. Situations that happen but you don’t think twice about or imagine anyone else going through.’

Just hearing that people like what we do, and that we’re getting it right, is such a great feeling. Of course, we’d also love to hear if there is anything you’d like to see us doing, or are getting wrong – do mail us and let us know at info@littlestuff.co.uk.

Lindam are keen for us to review their play pen, and one arrived on my doorstep just this morning. First impression? It’s HEAVY!!!!
She-who-crawls has made the office a suddenly hazardous place to be working in, so a bendy play pen will be a lifesaver, I’m thinking… watch this space for updates!

Our pregnant reviewer Tracy is no longer pregnant! Baby Matthew was born on 9th October, weight in at 8lbs and half an ounce.
Congratulations to Tracy, Brian and big brother Nathan – and welcome to the world little Matthew.
We’ll give her a few weeks, then she can get to work reviewing the newborn bits for us :)

Well, the lovely Richard at Myriad toys helped me out by getting the boats to me before I went away – they were duly secreted (with a marker pen, reason to be revealed in the review) into the depths of the car and kept hidden until just the right stream came up.

I’ll save the story for the review but suffice to say the boys LOVED their boats. Cam (8) was busy seeking out the fastest, most dangerous parts of the ‘wild rapids’ to task his boat with. Joe (6) just wanted his to stay upright for as long as possible and Toby happily pottered in the shallows. Daddy felt obliged to ‘help out’ with the sailing (boys toys…) and Mummy spent a tough hour or so sitting on the riverbank in the sunshine watching the boys play in the water and Ella pretending she could crawl, if she really wanted.
Heaven.

Last months bebePOD competition has closed now and the two lucky winners – Bianca and Luci – were kind enough to send us pictures of their prizes in action.

Luci, Mum to cute Hannah, said, “It’s already proving itself to be very useful, as Hannah is at the stage where she hates me being out of view. With the chair I know that she’s not going to roll off somewhere but can still see me.”

Ethan’s Mum, Bianca sent us this gorgeous photo and said that he “absolutely loves sitting in it”

This month we’re giving away a free Mamas & Papas Prima Pappa highchair, so don’t forget to enter to be in with a chance to win – competition closes on October 20th.

Pink, with the aid of the candeloo nightlight we’re reviewing (no, I’m not kidding) has finally decided to make the effort, and get moving.
She crawled! She really did!
Many apologies for the ghastly rug she’s on – it was in the holiday cottage, and I wasn’t about to stop her progress to put her somewhere prettier.
On the upside, you can see just how much she loves her candeloo light…

(Click here for part ONE of the candeloo tooli review by Katy, and right here for tooli review part 2 by Laura )

Okay, normally we split the reviews, but I have something useful to add to this one, so I’m chiming in. We’re just back from holiday, see. A real proper in-the-Welsh-mountains family holiday, with no street lights and strange bedrooms and weird animal noises outside. All my boys were sharing a bedroom, and therein lies the problem. No.1 likes a nightlight – but it distracts him from actually falling asleep. Boy does NOT like the dark and can only sleep if there’s a nightlight on. Jolly  LOVES the dark, and only likes to sleep if the room is in blackness… You see my dilemma? Sigh.

Anyhoo, the Candeloos arrived at the perfect time, so they were rapidly charged… and that is something well worth a comment all of its own.

The base station.

It’s a little piece of mystical magical fairy plastic, I tell you.

It’s just a sleek rectangle of plastic with dips in, and a discreet wire out the back. That’s all it is. And you sit two plastic alien slugs (I have the pink and red versions) on it, and a few hours later, they’re all charged up.

HOW???

There’s no connections, no metal… clever it is, as well as utterly safe. I often marvel at the genius design of it. Anyhoo, I’m digressing.

I whisked them into the suitcase and waited for the first bedtime to roll around. Before any clamour began about the lighting arrangements, I placed red candeloo on the table beside Boy’s bed (all pink was banned in the boys room, sadly, but that was okay cos I had other plans for that one) and switched out the light. The effect was instant. Boy was happy, because he had a ‘really, way cool’ light. No.1 was happy because he had a light, but it wasn’t bright enough for him to be distracted by and Jolly slept easily – it wasn’t a light on, y’see, it was a cool glowing slug and that was very okay by him. For the first holiday ever, the boys shared a room and we did not have the nightlight issue (we won’t talk about the knights-battles-under-the-duvet problem or the first-one-up-wakes-everyone-else-even-if-its-6-in-the-morning issue either). They took it in turns to pop it back on the magical charger in the morning and it was all set to go for the following night, glowing away happily all night long.

The pink one I used in Pink’s room, as it’s just bright enough to find your way around a strange bedroom and feed by, without being offensive at 5.30am. I don’t use a nightlight at home for Pink, but the holiday cottage had random steps and low ceilings, and on the 2nd night, with three bruised toes and a seriously banged head, I had the bright idea to carry the Candeloo with me :)

And here’s the biggest reason that I love the Candeloos;Pink  is charmed by these lights – she loves them more than anyone or anything. Little Miss Sloth finally learnt to crawl while we were away and the object that tempted her into that monumental effort? Her Candeloo. Honest and truly, it was. You can see the video clip here

The Candeloo slug (sorry, with three boys they were never going to be called anything else in our house) is incredibly tactile and ergonomic. Everyone loves to hold it and carry it.

(For part ONE of the candeloo review, click here… and if you want to see Pink’s amazing Crawling Feat, just click HERE)

Katy and I both get a set of these fantabulous lights. And we both wanted to write the review. So we’re both going to… This is Katy’s, mine’s coming tomorrow…:

We’ve got this new game in our house when friends come to play; it’s called ‘Guess What These Funny Little Things Are!’ and no one wins. There they sit, these two alien looking objects on their sleek little spacestation. A blue one and a green one with little alien antenna eyes and belly button holes. The closest answer we’ve had is a generic “ermmm, they’re toys, yes?”. Well, sort of but not quite.

They are the COOLEST night lights on the planet with the sleekest charger base station. Well, at least the coolest night lights I’ve ever seen, anyone seen anything cooler, you let me know, ok?

They are just amazing. Utterly. They are safe, they are functional, they are fun and very very cool. That’s ‘cooool’ as in “love ‘em Mum” and also cool as in they don’t get hot and burn little hands.

If you are looking for a night light solution (and more!) for your child(ren) then ‘ta da’, here it is. The Candeloo lights from Vessel are all you need. Nope, you don’t need to find an electrical socket in your children’s bedroom that isn’t covered by furniture and you no longer need to sing “aaaggghhh” cause the baby is playing with it again (funny how electrical sockets are just the right height for crawling babies, eh?). Yes, your child can grab one in one hand and teddy in the other as they toddle off, at 4am, for a much-needed wee. No, it won’t stop said child from slamming the bathroom door and waking the rest of the house up but hey, at least they didn’t shout, loudly, from their bed that they need a wee and it’s too dark and scary to move. Could be worse, they could’ve just wee’d in situ and then complained their bed was wet. Sigh.

My nearly-five-year-old son, Jacob, loves them. His is the blue because one wall of his bedroom matches that colour and the same goes for his baby brother’s green wall and Candeloo. I do have a slight fear that one day Jacob will accidentally drop one down the toilet as he now goes for a midnight-wee all by himself but I’m told they are splashproof; perfect for using outside on dark nights. I’ve already been told by Jacob that it is essential equipment for boy-dressed-as-Frankenstein to have a green light in his hand when he goes seeking sweets from the neighbours on Hallowe’en.

Candeloos. We adore them. Every time I walk past them, sitting there all ready to go on their charger, I smile and wish I had been the very clever person that designed them so I could gloat and say “yeah, I made those, neat, huh?”.

(For part TWO of the candeloo review, click here... and if you want to see Pink’s amazing Crawling Feat, just click HERE)

Candeloos currently available in the UK from Nubie for £53

Apologies for the gap – I’ve been away, and Katy’s been holding the fort with no time for blogging. So I’ll go mad now and do a quick recap, as we have lots going on the House of LittleStuff right now – it’s all really exciting :)
But most important – the holiday! It was brilliant – we took the boys (and the girl) to the Brecon Beacons, stayed in a cottage in the hills which was accessed by an unmade track, over a ford, and through the forest. Gorgeous it was and we did not want to come home. Spent many happy days walking the hills, playing in the streams (the boats will be reviewed, they were a HUGE hit), exploring the moors, we visited the beaches on the Gower, went down caves, discovered waterfalls… just ordinary family stuff, spending some much needed time all together after the bedlam that is Summer round here.

I’m pleased to report that many LittleStuff items were pressed into use and made life much easier. The Caboodle bag was a lifesaver every single day, always equipped for every eventuality and the Rockin’ Baby Pouch was just a godsend to always have in the car – we didn’t even bother taking a pushchair with us. The Bambino Merino sleeping bag was ace and kept Ella muchos cosy and the Candeloo lights were just brilliant for the whole family.
The LittleLife backpack will be featuring soon, it was used on all the long walks and was as perfectly designed as it could be for *real* walking.

ooh ooh ooh! And the girl learned to crawl! FINALLY! Video clip coming soon, promise.