Behind our last  Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door,  number twenty-four,  you have found our truly wonderful competition to give away a KEYCAMP FAMILY HOLIDAY!!!!!

Oh, we do like to end things with style!

We are giving away a Keycamp 7-night mobile home holiday at one of their European parcs, including return P&O Dover-Calais ferry crossings, for 2 adults and up to 4 children (aged under 18). Available holiday dates would be 1st April 2012 to 8th July 2012 – including Easter and Summer half-term. Wow!!!!

We have revealed 24 fantastic competitions this December and they are all running for several more weeks. You can get to them all here on our LittleStuff Advent Calendar page.

Good luck & Merry Christmas to one and all.

Behind our Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door number twenty-three you have found our competition to give away a a Kodak Easyshare Touch M5370 Digital Camerato one lucky winner!

Whether you’re a fan in the front row or just hanging out with friends, the fun starts with the sleek Kodak Easyshare Touch Camera M5370. Its responsive capacitive touchscreen lets you glide through your pictures with the same ease you do your social life.

Back in October we ran a competition to find the best hint/tip/advice for getting kids to eat their five-a-day fruit and veg. From the many wonderful entries we received we crowned Linda King as our winner for her fantastic poem;

If I offer them veggies but they just say no.
I hide them in my stews so they don’t know.
If fruit is a problem to get them to eat.
Frozen fruit kebabs are a tasty treat.
If they’re looking for a sweet for their lunch at school.
Little packs of raisins are a handy tool.
Muffins made with berries are also very yummy.
Especially when they’re made at home with Mummy.

Congratulations Linda!

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Green Giant have asked us to share with you their Merry Christmas video…

You can also visit the Green Giant Facebook page here for more useful tips, advice and fun stuff!

Behind our Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door number twenty-two you have found our competition to give away a Parent & Child Bath Robe Set from thebestbedlinenintheworld.com to one lucky winner!

Behind our Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door number twenty-one you have found our competition to give away a set of two Rice Garage Toy Storage Boxes from KIDSEN to one lucky winner!

KIDSEN is a fun and friendly children’s store stocking Scandinavian inspired products. Their range includes everything from Classic Wooden Toys and Swedish Nursery Furniture through to beautiful and practical children’s clothes from some of Scandinavia’s best brands.

Well, that’s it. No more Gift Ideas from us; we are done, you’re on your own. You can of course see the whole of this years Gift Guide right here.

But now the children are home from school, and we are calling the Christmas Holidays finally HERE.

The Advent Calendar will continue until Christmas Eve, of course – but we’ll not be here to talk to. We are closing our LittleStuff doors to fill our days with mince-pie-baking, sausageroll-making, cheesy movie watching, paperchain creating, sitting by the fire and walks in the snow (ple-e-e-e-ease let it snow…).

We just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for joining us during this most bonkers and wonderful year, and we look forward to seeing you all again in 2012.

See you on the other side… Toot toot!

Laura & Katy

xxx

Behind our Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door number twenty you have found our competition to give away an Aspace Oak Newbury Dresser to one lucky winner!

Aspace make gorgeous, great-quality furniture for children’s bedrooms – it’s as simple as that. They are letting us give away one of their fine Oak Newbury Dressers in this competition. The stylish simplicity of the Oak Newbury Dresser makes it versatile enough to fit in with any kind of established design.

Behind our Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door number nineteen you have found our competition to give away a a Luxe Tie Maternity Sweater from Isabella Oliver!

The Isabella Oliver Luxe Tie Sweater is made from luxurious cotton merino wool-blend in an easy style solution giving you slouchy chic with a statement silhouette. The simple shape offers comfort with a contemporary spin while the over bump tie gives definition to your waist. Enjoy wearing this style post pregnancy too.

The 8yr old LOVES the Tollins – and the new book is just as good as the first!

Conn Iggulden is a bit of a hero of our family. I stumbled across his Emperor books in the library and was transfixed. Then came the Big Book for Boys – instant love from No.1 son. Then, as if half the family were not enough for him to have collected, he writes these really quite brilliant books for younger bigger readers.

You know, the tricky 6-9 age where they’re clever enough to read chapter books, but are either bored or daunted by most of them?

And cleverly, it’s in essence a fairy book – but Tollins are NOT fairies. And they’re tough and exciting. Welcome in, boys-who-won’t-read-fairy-stories. Set in the 1920′s, there’s captures and escapes and flying, a le-ee-tle bit of romance, lots of bangs and fireworks and a horrible end for Wangle, courtesy of a Cat.

The books are a joy to read – witty and warm and exciting and fun to read aloud. And as they’re a collection of four short chapter books, they’re perfect for short bursts at bedtime.

You’ll love them. Honest.

You can get the first Tollins book here and the latest collection,Dynamite Tales, is available from Amazon for £9.69 here

Behind our Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door number eighteen you have found our competition to give away two fantastic children’s coats from Vertbaudet – one to each of two lucky winners!

A Girls’ Woolcloth Coat in Khaki and a Boys’ Woolcloth Pea Jacket in Charcol/Black.

Pregnancy Photography. Gorgeous.

Recording your bump, your pregnancy, this stage in your life – who doesn’t want to stop and hold on to these memories? Whether you’re loving your pregnancy, or hanging on by your fingernails for it all to be over, this is a time that won’t come again – and recording it with a portrait can be a really special thing to do that comes to mean more and more as the years go by

As Courtenay Hitchcock says “Because every bump is beautiful, every pregnancy unique.”

And yes, okay, it’s too late to have a portrait session booked in before Christmas now.

But.

A voucher is a wonderful thing – and a fab idea to leave hanging under the nose of a husband or a sister still floundering over what to get you…

A session with The Pregnancy Photographer starts from £125, and he can arrange exclusive 5* Babymoons too…

I. Love. This. Fridge.

It’s officially called the Samsung G-Series RFG23DERS American Fridge Freezer. But round these parts, it’s just known as The Monster.

It’s huge – and it’s beautiful.

When Samsung asked if I’d like one in my kitchen, I laughed a bit. Clearly they weren’t actually serious.

Turns out, they were.

This thing is HUGE. Seriously. It’s called the Monster for a reason. It’s 90cms – that’s 3′ – wide.

But… it’s so well-designed, so practical to use, to cleverly thought out, so darn PRETTY…. it’s the most loveable monster I’ve ever met.

We all know kitchen appliances are not things to get excited about. They’re just… dull.

Until, that is, you meet a good one.

Then all of a sudden you become a bit of an evangelical bore on the subject.

This fridge? I can talk on it for hours…

But firstly you do need to check the size – it is genuinely enormous, and probably won’t fit in a lot of kitchens (we actually had to take out a cupboard to fit it in).The fridge is double-doored – but they both open onto one cavernous interior, there’s no separating central divider. It is as big as an old-fashioned pantry, and it’s a bit like Mary Poppin’s carpet bag – it just keeps on accommodating whatever you try to put in it.

The doors hold stacks of cheese/butter/milk/orange juice, the shelves are capacious (and they have ingenious fold-and-slidey super powers to make room for bigger / taller stuff), the salad trays have individual humidity controls, the pantry tray at the bottom will hold whole plates of food, the freezer has a fabulous two-tier-tray  mechanism which means you can make use of the huge depth without having to constantly rummage up to your frozen elbow for the fish fingers. Even the tap on the front gives you options of cubed or crushed ice or just cold water…

For once, this Christmas the extra little fridge in our conservatory will only be used for drinks, and not for the overflow of turkey/stuffing/cheesecake that just won’t fit in the kitchen fridge.

If you were to ever dream about the The Best Fridge In The World… this is it.

You can buy the Samsung G-Series RFG23DERS American Fridge Freezer at most large Kitchen Appliance stores, and prices vary: I’ve seen it for anything between £1600 and £2000 – but if you pop over to Appliances Online they have a totally brilliant video which will introduce you fully to The Monster Fridge.

Love this.

Romantic and utterly enchanting.

That swooping bird with it’s sweet little tucked-away head is in brass, and it’s surrounded by the loveliest of vintage turquoise glass beads, finished with a nice simple toggle.

Just £17 from Gama over at Not On The High Street.

Behind our Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door number thirteen you have found our competition to give away a Funky Cow Weekender Washbag, a Funky Cow Classic Washbag and a Christmas Candle from Babes with Babies London to one lucky winner!

Babes with Babies London: Gorgeous clothing and gifts to make maternity and motherhood feel good.

For me, these are a le-e-e-tle bit pointless.

I mean, the whole point of a Lego figure is to play with it, yes?
Hmmm.
Apparently no.
Apparently, that comment is worthy of a most disdainful (and pitying) look, combined with a ve-e—ry pa-ti-en-t explanation  for the dear and aged Mama who doesn’t Get It.

Apparently the ONE thing that drives any Lego-er insane is never ever being able to find the right figure. And never being able to fully appreciate their magnificence properly when they’re languishing in the depths of Lego crates.

And so, whilst I sniffed at this little shelving unit, there were three collective gasps of “Oh, that’s totally brilliant!” from three smaller life forms behind me.

So there you have it – the Lego Minifigure Display Case. A totally pointless stroke of genius…

The Lego Minifigure Display Case available on Amazon for a head under £18

Did you know there’s a new volume of seven Dr Seuss stories out? Brand shiny new ones you’ve not read before?

No, me either!

*excited*

But you need to be quick – Waterstones is the only place I can find it in stock online (your local bookseller will be able to help though).
They’re older stories, previously printed in magazines and never before in a book, and they are beyond the One Fish, Two Fish stage.

I love them all, and I can’t possibly choose…

“It’s hard to decide,”

Said young Henry McBride.

“it’s terribly, terribly hard to decide.

When a fellow grows up and turns into a man,

A fellow should pick the best job that he can.

But there’s so many jobs that would be so much fun,

It’s terribly hard to decide on just one.”

It’s a wonderful hardback collection, I suggest any Dr Seuss fan (and lets face it, who isn’t?) should go rootle one out as soon as you possibly can.

(I found it In Stock for £8.71 at Waterstones)

Behind our Christmas 2011 Advent Calendar door number twelve you have found our competition to give away an amazing canvas children’s wigwam from The Gifted Penguin to one lucky winner!

The Gifted Penguin have three styles of wigwam; Cowboys & Indians, Fairy Stripes and Floral Stripes. They are all easy to assemble and made from 100% canvas. They are suitable for outdoor and indoor use too.

What IS it with children and magnets?

Well, whatever the attraction (Attraction! Geddit?! Oh, I make myself larf…), this book has it in spades. The Gruffalo’s Child – almost as beloved in this house as The Gruffalo itself – And a heap of magnets to play with, creating your own scenes in the book; having the owl tell the fox off, the bird peck at the snake…. oh, sorry, that’s just our bossy 4yr old, probably…

Now usually these magnet books are a monster price – but LOOK! Just over a fiver on Amazon! BARGAIN! And a tippety-TOP stocking filler…
The Gruffalo’s Child Magnetic Activity book on Amazon for £5.49

Our competition to give away a Kettler Speedy Balance Bike from Active Garden to one lucky winner ends tomorrow!

Balance bikes are fantastic toys, they really do teach young children bicycle balance and help them learn to ride a pedal bike more easily. They are also really good fun! We at LittleStuff are big fans of balance bikes; one of our youngest could ride his pedal bike without stabilisers from age 3 thanks to his scooting around on a balance bike from 18 months!

One thing my boys LOVE to do (and I know it’s not just mine) is make videos. I always think it’s their equivalent to us talking into a clunky top-loading tape recorder – they put on shows, perform ‘the news’, the sneak up on each other, they record super-fantastic moves on computer games… And as parents we just love watching what they come up with (even the odd expected ‘surprise’ video that naturally occurs when you leave two brothers alone with a video camera. You just know that a penis mention is going to happen somewhere…).

Boy (just 10) was sent the Playfull camera to review, and he has really been putting it through its paces. He uses it a lot – and I’d love to show you the fruits of his labour, but mostly it is nonsensical 10yr old type stuff. I will come back and post a clip, honest. Just as soon as I have a couple of hours to plod through the mindless giggling and flashes of body parts ruining a perfectly good small-sister-singing clip (yes, really *eyeroll*).

In the meantime – is this a good video camera? Is it a good buy? Is it a Great Gift Idea?

Yes, yes and thrice YES.

The quality is excellent, the controls are dead easy, it hasn’t failed on us once, the downloading / sharing couldn’t be easier, and the screen for viewing is excellent (Boy has a particular fondness for playing back movies in B&W at double speed – makes him helpless with laughter. In fact he creates movies with the aid of Jolly, purely so that they can be played backwards and look like old Laurel & Hardy slapstick sequences… now THAT is the clip I should show you…)

It’s a small camera – around the size of a mobile phone – which is a great size for keeping it handy. D’you remember when we used to lug those enormous tape video cameras out at Christmas and birthdays? Thank goodness things have moved on!

Now you can have a full HD res video online and winging its way to Grandma before you can say “look who’s walking!”.

The Kodak Playfull has been reduced to £99.99 – and we would seriously recommend you take a look if you’re thinking about buying a video camera for Christmas (either as a gift or just for your to use – it’s good for both!).