I'm a full-time mummy

The New Year always brings with it fresh starts and new beginnings for the coming twelve months. What greater way to start 2013 than by redecorating your baby's nursery. Here are some great ideas that you can use to make the nursery more exciting for toddlers.

Brighten up the walls with bright colours

Young children should be in exciting and stimulating environments to help them learn and develop. If your nursery has plain white wash walls then you should inject some colour with a bright feature wall or by painting your baby's favourite cartoon characters and animals on the wall. If you are not the best with a paint brush or would like an alternative to painting the nursery then you can use wall stickers to bring your toddler's nursery to life.

Make your nursery educational

There are many great ways to make your nursery educational. One way to interact with children in the nursery is to create a reading area in the corner of the room. Start by using beanbags and an assortment of soft cushions and throws in a circle, for you to sit and read together. By fitting bookshelves in the same corner of the room you can easily access interactive toys and games when having learning time.

Making the nursery exciting for toddlers

To make your nursery exciting for toddlers it is a great idea to create a theme for the room and to build on this with colours, pictures, themed bed covers, curtains, rugs, lampshades and accessories.

If you have a boy then you could choose a cowboy theme and have a big sheriff Badge Night light placed above their bed and a rocking horse in the room. Or you could choose a racing theme and have a car shaped bed, a rug with racing cars on that your child can play or accessories and characters from the Disney and Pixar film, Cars.

If you are creating a theme for a girl then you could opt for a princess theme and have a castle painted onto the wall, shelves to display their favourite dolls or even a mini wardrobe with clothes in for dressing dolls and teddy bears. Or you could create a fairy and magical creatures theme and create a secret treasure chest for storing all of their toys.

For more exciting nursery ideas visit Vertbaudet for tips on how to decorate your nursery for a fresh start in the New Year.

I am a fan of wall stickers so when I came across the opportunity to review this cute family vinyl wall stickers, of course I immediately go ahead for it! I browsed through the website selection for family type of wall stickers, mind you, there are tons of designs to choose from but what I had on mind was something like stick figurines so the one that I chose is the VW family vinyl design even though none of us own any VW.

Description from the product page:
"Show off your unique family on the family car with our vinyl decal family kits and mix and match stick family car decals. Every member of the family is special, which is why you get to pick and choose individual stick family decals to represent each of the unique members of your family on your car or even walls. There are stick family car decals for every member of the family, from baby figure stickers to grandparents figure decals to choose from. You can choose to add stick family members for those other things that define who your family is our pets stick people and other car family decals. Looking for untraditional vinyl decal family kits? Or vinyl decal family kits are a fun twist on the typical car window stickers family, with different themes to choose from, ranging from sports to Star Wars family decals. "

The wall sticker came in a nice packaging and with proper and easy to follow instructions on how to apply the wall stickers. I did not use all the family / animals figurines as we don't have any dogs or cats or babies (for now hahaha) so I only put up the mummy, daddy, little boy and little girl figurines.

Now let me explain a bit why I ended up applying the wall stickers on a ermm... our bathroom door instead of on a wall. You see, there might be some possibility of our room being repaint so I thought, we won't be having our bathroom door changed so tadaaaa... bathroom door it is! 

I asked my 3.5 years old boy whether he wants to stand next to mummy or daddy and my boy said 'Stand next to mummy!' so alright... I got on to gently peel off the figurines and apply it one by one. It is a bit difficult for me as the figurines are very thin (stick figures you see!) and I was quite worried I might accidentally folded the stickers!

Anyway, after a few minutes I managed to put all 4 figurines nicely next to each other while my boy hover next to me and my girl safely in her playpen tried to see what is happening. Once I was done, I carried my girl out and let her explore the wall stickers, at the same time explaining to my 2 kiddos who they represents in our family.

Close up shot of our family hahahaha... I love it even though we do not own any VW car, I think this is a cute way to spice up a room!

You can view more designs at http://www.vinyldisorder.com/familykits.html

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

I was just thinking the other day... wouldn't it be great if my parents were still alive? Wouldn't it be nice if I could bring my 2 kiddos to visit their grandfather and grandmother? Another place that I can drive and fetch my kiddos to, let them see my birth place, or the place where I grew up and stay before I shifted here.

I have written a post on parenting with extended family in May 2012 and just want to repeat my opinion:

"I think it is good to have extended family around. It gives a sense of belonging to a larger scale of family root and we are also showing and displaying to our children how we should be treated when we get old one day..."

My FIL passed away in Dec 2004, my dad in April 2006 and my mum in January 2007. There's only my 68 years old MIL left for my 2 kiddos to terrorised at (hehehe) so yeah, I do wonder what if my parents were still alive now...

I would've loved to fetch my kiddos every now and then to visit my parents, let them dote on my kiddos etc etc. Hmmm...

How about you? Does your child get to spend time with their grandparents? What do they do?