Saturday, September 27, 2008

Gift Ideas

One of the other blogs I read had a post asking readers to comment about their favorite toys in their house and I've decided to be a copy cat and do a similar post. Abby and Nate have birthdays coming up in October and then there's Christmas. What we don't need is more toys that get dumped out of the toy box, played with for 10 min. and then forgotten. I really want to be purposeful in how I spend my money this holiday season. So what I want you to do is leave a comment telling me what toys actually get played with in your house. What are the favorites that you couldn't live without. And don't say Polly Pockets or Thomas trains....you know we already have tons of those (and they are great). Okay, if the only thing you can think of is Thomas trains than go ahead and say it. I truly could do an entire post about how much we love our Thomas trains, but I'm also going to introduce you to something ((hopefully) that is new to you!
This is a zip bin!
This is the farm one and Christian keeps all of his tractors, farm equipment, farm animals and even a few tractor books in it.
You unzip it and it becomes an adorable playmat.
It's colorful and gets his imagination going.
I must tell you: I love zip bins!!! We have a farm one, a car one and one for blocks (don't buy the block one, it's not that great). You can see all the different kinds of zip bins at www.zipbin.com You can't buy them at that website. I've gotten all of mine on ebay (If you look them up on ebay make sure you search for zipbin as one word and zip bin as two words). I've given the castle one as a gift several times with My Little Pony stuff inside!! These make great presents because it keeps a certain category of toys organized (are you picking up on the fact that I LOVE to be organized??) and it's portable (I can't tell you how many places this thing has been. I just counted; it's been in six different states). My favorite thing about zip bins is you can put them away for a week or two and then when you get them out again there is renewed interest in them. They've started making mini zipbins. I wouldn't buy them, they're too small. They have a dinosaur one that I know Christian would love. So check out their website and let me know if you end up buying one!
Back to the most important part of this post: Please leave me a comment and give me some gift ideas. And remember I have a few three year old boys to shop for, as well as a baby, an almost eight year old, several four year old girls, an almost five year old girl, a three year old girl....I could keep going!
Thanks for helping me!

3 comments:

Lori said...

We have the dinosaur one!!!! We love it here...that and the Bucket of Dinosaurs from Animal Planet.

I think the one thing that Jake loves is pretend play...anything dress up or acting out. (he has a police officer dress up costume) I think it would be adorable to have the kiddos get together and have a dress up/pretend play date. Not sure how to pull it off...just a very tired, late night thought.

Lori said...

OH...duh...forgot to add that the zip bins are WONDERFUL!! Thanks for posting about them...we need to weed out toys and becase Jake loves pretend play, these will definitely be on my list...and I LOVE having them all organized in the bins, too!!!

Katy said...

Wow - I've never seen those zip bins things - but they look fantastic! LOVE the idea!!! My boys are totally in love with superheroes right now, but also really love Kid K'nex...they would build for HOURS!!! And totally love the dress up costumes too.