Tag: vintage fisher price

Castle Babystar.

Published on by Darlene Dee4 Comments

I have a very serious question.

HOW DID THE TINIEST PERSON IN THE FAMILY TAKE OVER THIS WHOLE HOUSE???

Ok, for example, look at this dining room. There is a tiny dining table in the tiny corner and the rest of the room is a rocking horse and ride on horse and a bunch of blank space because Babystar likes to RUN.

dining room

Please also notice the living room. This ENTIRE AREA is dedicated to a teepee fort for Babystar. And the window seat holds her adorable toddler books. Including the new box of Baby Lit board books that I bought her from Costco ($15.99) thirty percent because I thought she would like them and seventy percent because if Babystar is going to take over the house, then her things should at least be cute. (All I read are children’s books. HOW ON EARTH do other parents read books?!? Genuinely asking. I keep a book in the bathroom and I read one chapter per bath so I will likely finish it by my birthday. In September.) Oh! That adorable tiny wooden bookshelf is from Ikea ($24.99) and it’s perfect for toddler sized books.

That window seat is actually pretty cool. It holds books and a couple of Melissa & Doug puzzles. One puzzle set is the really cool one she played with last fall with her cousins. I finally found it (on CLEARANCE at Target for $8.98) and Babystar LOVES it. I think it is the perfect started puzzle for kids, because you just match the shapes to create a picture. You don’t actually have to fit one particular piece into one particular place. Genius. The other puzzle was given to us by our only Colorado friend (so far). Babystar gets to drive the vehicles around the puzzle path to match them to their homes. I mean it: Melissa and Doug are both GENIUSES.

Over here we have the toy box corner. That toy box ($42) is FULL and it’s not even her only toy box. It’s her living room toy box. I don’t have room in this giant fucking farmhouse for a desk which I really need but we have a DOWNSTAIRS TOY BOX.

toy box

And do you even see this freaking train table?!? It is taking up some prime real estate in the living room just so Babystar can have a place to play dinosaurs with her rocks. Oh, and she plays trains sometimes too. Sometimes the Trolls ride the trains. Ok, it really does make her happy. And it was FREE thanks to an awesome mama on an awesome Boulder mama Facebook page.

train table

We shoved the couches and lamps and end tables into the other corner over there and you better believe she STILL LEAVES HER TOYS ALL OVER THE COUCHES. Dude. What.

living room

Also one of those ottomans is full of papers that really belong in a desk. Help. Me.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $26,955.75

 

Dear Fisher Price: Thanks, Boo.

Published on by Darlene Dee6 Comments

Babystar received some really excellent gifts for her birthday last June. I didn’t list them here because of course I didn’t BUY them, but she was a very lucky little two-year-old. (In fact, she got so many great presents that I immediately packed a few of them away so she could have new toys this fall. #momhack)

One of her favorite new toys is her vintage-inspired Fisher-Price cash register. These days she mostly enjoys popping in the coins and pushing the buttons, but I can see the potential for plenty of imaginary play in the future. Every single kid that comes over to play gravitates to that cash register. All of them. And some of the adults.


By mid-July, we were down to two coins. (The cash register comes with six.) No one was surprised. The ToddlerMonster relocates things like its her job. Every kid that comes over fights over plays with this toy. PLUS the new kitten is obsessed with the coins. I have literally seen her reach her little paw into the drawer and bat out a plastic coin and then carry it away in her mouth. 


After a bit of googling and searching the Fisher-Price website and eBay, I realized that I could not purchase replacement coins. Huge bummer. (Really, Fisher-Price, you should get on this.)

I emailed Fisher-Price asking if there was any way they could sell me some additional plastic coins. They wrote back that they were very sorry that they did not offer the coins for sale and they sent me a $25 gift certificate for anything Fisher-Price! (Or Mattel, or Hot Wheels, (but not American Girl), but LIKE WHOA SO NICE!)

I didn’t have to provide proof of purchase or anything, which is good, since the cash register was a gift. So, um, live your life however you like. But just know that you can email Fisher-Price about your cash register coins and they might send you a gift certificate for a free toy.

I’m actually not trying to help the world defraud Fisher-Price. I really just want them to manufacture and sell packs of replacement / additional coins for this super cool cash register!! But I can’t control other people. Yet. 

I couldn’t use the voucher online and it was a pain to use at Target, but the Target cashier eventually overrode something and made it work. Babystar chose a $14.99 “iPad”, and I didn’t get any cash back or anything. But hey! FREE TOY!

 

Babystar loves her iPad and keeps it by the bed with a pile of books. Most mornings she will play with the iPad and read books and drink her Unicorn Water while I have my coffee. WHICH IS AMAZING SHE TOTALLY WINS TODDLER OF THE YEAR. At least in our house, where the competition is admittedly slim.

PLUS, once we figured out that the CAT was losing the coins and not the BABY, we had a better idea of where to look. The current coin total is five but it fluctuates daily. 

RAISING BABYSTAR: $21,140.26

 

Ponies and Cars and Ponies and Ponies.

Published on by Darlene Dee1 Comment

And a school. And some more stuff.

Last Saturday, I worked a booth selling donated books and games at a flea market to raise money for the Organization for Autism Research.

April is Autism Awareness Month. Almost everyone has heard of Autism Speaks and Light It Up Blue, which is cool, but if you dig deeper, Autism Speaks spends a lot of their money trying to find a ’cause’ or a ‘cure’ for autism. (Hint: it is not vaccines.) There are other organizations that spend more time and money advocating for those with autism and helping families with important resources. OAR is the latter, and I heart them for it. I digress.

I didn’t even LOOK at the other vendors until the ToddlerMonster came to visit. She wanted to walk around. Well, really she wanted to run but we compromised.

We came home with a vintage Fisher Price airplane ($10), schoolhouse ($10) and dollhouse ($5, not pictured because I think it is still in the van) that all need a good cleaning. (These might really be for me, but I pretend they are for Babystar. Or maybe the other way around? I think I need to do a post on ALL of the vintage Fisher Price I have acquired since Babystar’s birth…)


We also found other cheaper plastic airplanes for one dollar each ($4) and a yellow bouncy ball (free) and some old Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars ($5) and a stuffed penguin ($1) and like a million PONIES ($1). I only had one dollar left and Babystar kept pulling tiny ponies out of a giant bin of plastic toys and screeching in joy and hugging them so the girl selling them insisted that we take as many as we could find for that dollar. (I also bought a chair for myself from her mother so I don’t think we used Babystar’s cuteness to take advantage of them. Too much.)


RAISING BABYSTAR: $16,003.94