Mathilda's Market - 28th February - Canberra

We’re so excited! On Sunday 28 February we will be showcasing our wares at Mathilda's Market. This is a fabulous niche market that offers unique, stylish and affordable baby & kids goods that are lovingly handmade or of limited production.

The retailers are hand picked to ensure an exciting product range. It's a kid's shopping heaven. Better yet, most of the retailers do not have a shop front, so you know you'll find something special, not available anywhere else. Please come and see our stand at Mathilda’s Market from 9am to 1pm at the Hyatt Hotel Canberra, Commonwealth Ave. Entry and parking is free. With almost 50 retailers, gourmet food and kids entertainment, Mathilda’s Market is becoming one of Canberra’s hippest and fun shopping destinations for your little ones. Although there is no ATM machine in the Hyatt Hotel the Mathilda's Market organisers have been kind enough to set up an eftpos facility whereby you can pay a small ATM fee of $2 to withdraw money with them at the entry. So if you get excited and buy more then you anticipate - there IS more money to be found!

For a sneak preview, have a look at the website (http://www.mathildasmarket.com.au/) and enjoy a browse through the photos of all participants.

Alison, or Alison and I (depending on when this baby decides to arrive) will see you there!

Heather

Handle With Care Sale time

For our second week of birthday celebrations (yes I did forget to blog about our first week!) we are celebrating all things nappies!
Enter the coupon code nappies at the checkout to receive a massive 20% off your nappy and nappy accessories purchase. This includes ALL nappies, wipes, wetbags, little squirts and leg warmers.

Have fun!!!!

x heather

Just a bit of a FUN sale...

I've decided to hold a Green Kids Funtimes sale - because this is what you do when you want to make room to buy more!!!

Up until Monday (or until sold out) our Green Kids Funtimes prints will be on sale at $21 each, that's over 15% off!!!

Get in quick to pick up these fabulous, fun and vibrant prints for your little ones bottom!

Does not take much...

To excite a pregnant woman!!! I've just been working on some orders for new products for Handle With Care and I came across some new colours that are available in our Itzbeen baby care timer! I am incredibly excited as I must have been living under a rock over the last few months - I have no idea how long these colours have been available!


For those not familiar with this fabulous creation the Itzbeen baby care timer is a wonderful little device developed by 2 sleep deprived parents in the United States. The timer allows you to keep track of your little ones habits without worrying about finding a piece of paper and a pen or a light or clock. This clever little device has it all, a light, a clock, an alarm and buttons to keep track of feeding, nappy changes, sleep an extra button and for the breastfeeding mothers a button for which side you last fed on and it is all lockable to ensure you don't accidently change those timers!

I never had one of these when my nearly 3 year old was a baby, we had an exercise book in the kitchen which we would try to remember to put the information on so we could calculate when he last fed, but I usually woke up in the morning somewhat frazzled and unsure - was it 11.30 or 1.30 or both that I was up before the 3.30 and 5.30 I was also up for! We got our Itzbeen when Hamish was 18 months old, he was sick so I 'renamed' the buttons in alphabetical order, dimetapp, nurofen, panadoland sleep. I've used it a bit with him since and cannot wait to use it in newborn mode in just a few more weeks!

Is the Itzbeen just for babies? No the Itzbeen is very flexible, one of our customers informed us that they had used it in early labour to time contractions! Several people have noted that it would be handy for people on multiple medications, as long as you know which timer is which medication you could use it to assist you in taking them at regular intervals.


So now that the Itzbeen is available in such a great range of colours (and I'm sure we will see more) it has become an even more stylish and very handy device!

Shoes, shoes, shoes...

I must confess, this morning I was pottering in the business room and selecting (in my mind) some items for my inutero baby - not the first nor the last time that this will happen! There are many things I would like and am constantly having to restrain myself. Alison and baby Emma visited to help pack some orders and thankfully Alison did not restrain herself and so satisfied my cluckyness for yet another day! Emma was quickly put into some beautiful crochet Mary Janes. But seriously, how could you resist these?

I've kept busy this morning whilst my little one was out with his grandparents and have finally updated some stock on the website, Aden and Anais wraps, Vanchi extra large wraps and wrap and hat sets are all restocked and a new range to Handle With Care, Pear and Bear has now started to be put on the website. There is still; as always plenty of stock that needs to be put on the website - it is an incredibly difficult task to keep on top of it all but we are doing our best :-)

But for now that is all from me, a morning of busy business tasks has left me ready for a midday nap!

x heather

Web shopping...so many benefits

I've always been a fan of shopping on the wonderful world wide web. As mothers Alison and I knew that providing our shop online and assistance via email would be extremely valuable to our customers as we knew how useful we have found it since we had children!

This Christmas I really threw myself into internet based shopping. Heading into my third trimester and experiencing all the normal aches and pains that come with pregnancy and a 2.5 year old in tow I wasn't so keen on finding the time to walk around the shops finding gifts. Like many I've appreciated the various store newsletters I have received with the Christmas Sales, and let me tell you I have jumped at the opportunity to buy many gifts as a result!

So what have I purchased? Many things including photo canvases and photo books, personalised kids lunch boxes and drink bottles, clothing and more. My latest purchase was this morning; for some weeks now I have been on the hunt for a backpack for my son. Keen to find something different to the mainstream Disney character bags I have searched all the usual sites and just couldn't find something that grabbed me. That was until a friend reminded me of Penny Scallan! I saw these bags a few months ago and was immediately attracted to them, so when I finally came across the website it just took me a couple of days to decide exactly what I was going to get and the order was placed.

These gorgeous bags are made from lined PVC and are just so cute! There are a number of lines available at Penny Scallan to interested you although I did find the boy prints a little restrictive - but this seems to be the case everywhere so I was not in the least surprised or put off! So I placed my order for a Lunchbox, Kindy bag and Wheelie travel bag in the Blue navy star design. So I am now excitedly awaiting another package in the mail :-) I think the postie might know me on a first name basis soon!

Big Christmas SALE

Instead of relaxing and enjoying the festive season with our families we have decided to have a Christmas sale!!! And a big one at that

20% off all myMonkeymoo pram liners and blankets
10% off all nappies and nappy accessories
FREE express postage on all orders over $100 value
15% off EVERYTHING else in store!.

Get in quickly to snap up a bargain, we have many one off’s you don’t want to miss out on.

Sale ends 24th December 2009

Due to the complex nature of the sale a standard 10% discount will be applied to all orders used with the coupon code ‘Christmas’, for orders over a certain value or pram liner orders we will manually adjust totals, so if you pay by paypal we will provide partial refunds.

Another market has come and gone which has finished up our market run for 2009! It's been a couple of weeks now, the Handle With Care team finished this market and subsequently checked out for a few days, resting and just playing mums for a while!

The Handmade market was held on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st November and mother nature was certainly not kind to us! For the Friday twilight market we were left very uncomfortable with sticky 50% humidity and 35+ degree heat. Alison’s little 8 week old Emma tried so hard to just enjoy her night out with the girls but ultimately the heat made it very difficult for her, whilst we were left throwing down the bottles of water and fanning ourselves counting down until the end of the night! Saturday was slightly more comfortable, we came armed with a fan and the humidity was down again.

There is no doubt that the heat kept people away; the September market left us without a minute to spare the entire day but this time we were actually able to have the odd short break and spend a little bit of time with some of our customers. Despite the heat though we still had many many people come through those doors all seriously shopping for Christmas! Our beautiful Bobishi booties were a favourite once again, as were the Little Bean ice packs and Ivy Designs head scarves.

Here are some photos of our set up...unfortunately I was so flustered from the heat I just took a few of the same photos and then resumed my seat by the water bottle, so excuse the poor quality!

Once again I was not in the headspace to shop (well other than for food which once again satisfied me 110%) however Alison did purchase a beautiful lantern from Electric Firefly as well as some gorgeous felt handbags from Heart Felt Australia.

In true form my father checked out what the food vendors had to offer and came to show me some rather interesting looking wine from Disaster Bay Chilis, the wine of course is none other than Chilli Wine. Clearly the handmade market caters for EVERYBODY from young to old!

We are looking forward to the 2010 instalments of markets, we will keep you posted on which ones we decide to attend with March being the big ‘due date’ for myself we are just not sure at this point which markets we will attend and when!

Handmade Market this weekend

Can I preface this with reminding everyone that there are only 37 more sleeps until Santa visits! Needless to say we are excited that another market is on! Canberra's quarterly Upmarket brings together talented artists, designers, stylists, craftspeople and gourmets all at one destination. It is a unique event to connect the makers of beautiful things to people who appreciate the quality, handcrafted and locally designed.

Come along to the Twilight Market, this Friday 20th November from 5-9pm and enjoy a glass of wine, some dinner underneath the 'stars' and a shop around over 50 boutique stalls. Or come along on Saturday between 10am-4pm and enjoy the Eat@Handmade and many many many boutique stalls both indoors and out.

The organisers have really out done themselves this market, with industrial fans organised for within the shed and a free bus running from Civic interchange to the woolshed on the Saturday. Follow this link for more information about the bus service and the market including a vendors page.

I really encourage all Canberrans to venture out and check the market out, there really is something for everyone and it is definitely more of an event than just a market.

Addiction...

This week I am 23 weeks pregnant with my much awaited second beautiful baby. Unfortunately this pregnancy has come with the lovely symptom of reflux. I have been overjoyed to experience it since about week 7 of the pregnancy which left me very ill until I worked out what it was. It’s been managed well since then, but this week I’ve had to use the Zantac and Mylanta together which has left me looking at my diet and wondering if there was something (other than my increasingly active growing baby) that was causing it to worsen. I’m absolutely devastated to work out that it is chocolate. My beloved!

Now Wikipedia describes addiction as an obsession, compulsion, or excessive psychological dependence and in its most common usage these days for things like chocolate addiction it says the term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user themself to their individual health, mental state, or social life. I read this and it occurs to me, I do have an addiction, because despite this awful side effect of heartburn even when I use zantac…I still want to eat it.

Most devastating, is the fact that the Handmade Market is on this weekend. Alison and I have typically eaten our way through each market, conveniently we have had one of us pregnant at each market, and so eating our way through and supporting the food vendors at the markets has been easy.

I was gearing up this week to buy our ever favourite cupcakes from ‘Little Miss Cupcake’.

These Red Velvet and Cherry Ripe cupcakes are absolutely divine…(and chocolate!) and are just one of the huge range of absolutely delicious cupcakes that Little Miss Cupcake offers. At the first Handmade Market we attended Little Miss Cupcake sold out before midday...testament to everything I've said above and more.

And so, I have given this much thought and I have decided that the mylanta will be visiting the markets with us this weekend because I simply CANNOT resist the temptation of Little Miss Cupcake…and I highly suggest everyone try them. But I warn you, once you go there you quite possibly will never come back!

See you there

Heather