Babiekins Magazine

A Trendsetting Magazine & Online Community For The Trendsetting Child + Parent

The Mama’s Guide to Chic and Purposeful Gifting

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IMG_0600 copyHow the holidays are upon us already I can’t quite explain. But somehow, here we are, late enough into December that I am embarrassed to admit I have yet to order our holiday cards. I’ll get to that, but first, in keeping with time honored traditions of Editor’s Gift Guides, behold, find my spin for this year: A Mama’s Guide to Chic & Purposeful Gifting. Because don’t all mamas love to multitask.

FOR THE MOM IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

Return the favor of having borrowed some sugar and invite her to a New Arrival Supper Club from ultimate neighbor and current featured mama, Miry Whitehall.Return the favor of having borrowed some sugar and invite her to a New Arrival Supper Club from ultimate neighbor and current featured mama, Miry Whitehall.

FOR THE MAMA WITH THE ENVIABLE INSTA FEED
She knows and goes everywhere and everything, but does she know about For Better Not Worse? Gift her with a tee, sweatshirt or what have you emblazoned with one of their sweet logos, knowing that it’s guaranteed not only to garner a whole host of likes online, but in real life as well as this company is committed to ending childhood hunger. For every piece purchased from the collection, a bag of groceries gets delivered to a child in need.

FOR THE NEW MAMA
It’s entirely likely said friend has a closet full of “Baby’s First Christmas” t-shirts enough to last until the baby heads to college. Instead, consider purchasing a Bisous bracelet. Endorsed by Instagram sensation @lbrand_stylegirl and made by
@drippingingems, the gift provides what every mother, new or otherwise, could ever want for her child, an opportunity to watch them continue to grow and flourish. As part of their Gems for Good initiative, 100% of each purchase’s proceeds g0 toward Bisous for Leo and finding a cure for INAD, a rare debilitating disease being billed as a cross between Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, for kids. So stack ‘em up, content in knowing you’ll be setting the trend to fashion a new life for families suffering from INAD.

FOR THE STAGE MOM
We all know how harried this mom can be, shuffling her child to and from auditions, rehearsals and performances. Help keep her organized by gifting her with a bag from @scenerybags. With materials sourced from shuttered Broadway shows, this company makes stylish and purposeful bags that not only reduce waste headed to the landfill, but simultaneously send underprivileged kids to the theatre. A transformative gift on many a level for which we can give a standing ovation. Bravo!

FOR THE PTA PRESIDENT

She’s the mama singlehandedly taking one for the entire team (meaning, your kid’s class). To recognize what a KEY role she plays in the school process, gift her with a Giving Key, which recognizes the value of every human by hiring folks out of homelessness to shape and craft their products. Each purchase helps a person transitioning off the streets find purpose, place and a paycheck. With a personalized key crafted with an inspirational word of your choice, you’ll be able to show Tracy Flick how much she’s inspired you.

FOR YOUR MAMA
Family is the cornerstone of what life’s all about. Show your mama some love by gifting her with a tee shirt or bag from Adopt Together’s collection of merchandise. Adopt Together is a crowdsourcing platform for families looking to adoption to grow their family. The number one reason folks don’t through with the process is the cost. So honor thy mother, show her you appreciate all the unsung work she does by helping to bring a child to their loving forever home. Because all we really want for the holidays is a family to spend it with.

With wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season to all.

Hair of the (Halloween) Dog

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Or should that read Cat?!

Over here at the Haas Household, we take Halloween very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that we’ve had barely a minute to post to social media. #31DaysofHalloween, our annual tradition of packing in as much Halloween goodness as 31 days will allow, flies by in the blink of an eye.  Kind of like childhood in general. And with my birthday, the Haasband’s birthday, my mother in law’s birthday, my stepfather’s birthday AND our anniversary all in this wicked month, though it’s my favorite of the 12, it’s the one I seemingly can’t get anything non-Halloween accomplished in because of all the jam packed fun. Not that I’m complaining.

Alas, now that it’s over, I want to cry into my pumpkin spiced latte. If you, like me, are feeling like you’re just not ready to let it go, here’s a handy guide of LA’s best haunts (and one of NY’s) to get you started on your Halloween planning for next year. T – 11 months, but whose counting?!

  1. Visit every pumpkin patch in your town, your neighboring town, the town bordering that one, and so on and buy a pumpkin from each of them.
  2. Make a pumpkin scape.
  3. Buy all of Meri Meri’s Halloween themed paper goods and use them every day to get the kids excited about eating with their fun designs.
  4. Use a sharpie to color a clementine like a jack o lantern and leave it in your child’s lunchbox.
  5. Read Halloween Books (Room on a Broom is a favorite in our house).
  6. Watch Hocus Pocus and Teen Witch.
  7. Decorate pumpkins (mini white pumpkins and chalk markers are perfect for this).
  8. Raid the local Trader Joe’s for any and all things pumpkin.
  9. Decorate the Trader Joe’s Haunted Gingerbread House.
  10. Make homemade Halloween cookies. Make it a free form challenge and have the kids draw their own bats, ghosts and vampires.
  11. Sign up for a Spooky Science class at LA’s incredible Genius Kids.
  12. Visit Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights.
  13. Ride LA’s original Haunted Hayride.
  14. Get over your arachnophobia at Boo at the Zoo.
  15. Visit the Spooky Science exhibit at the Discovery Cube LA.
  16. Get tickets for the Haunted Arroyo at Kids’ Space Museum.
  17. Pop in to a Meri Cherry Halloween Pop Up art class.
  18. Read (or re-read) Mary Roach’s raucous book, Spook.
  19. Ride the LA Live Steamers Ghost Train.
  20. Visit Boney Island.
  21. Spend a day at Underwood Family Farms, ride a tractor drawn hay ride, do the corn maze, pick a fairy tale pumpkin.
  22. Grab some willing friends and do Race LA’s Haunted Halloween Hunt (a 4 mile run/scavenger hunt around downtown Los Angeles).
  23. Try all of the spooky flavors at Salt & Straw Ice Cream
  24. Hop on a plane, travel all the way across the country for a family event and happen into NY’s Chelsea Market to catch the incredible Halloween display.
  25. Scour all of LA’s vintage shops for the perfect home made costume (we do family costumes in our house. This year, it’s Back to the Future).
  26. Beg a member or magician friend to get you an invite to LA’s famed Magic Castle.
  27. Go Apple Picking at Riley’s Farm in Oak Glen.
  28. Read the NYT Halloween Kids Section with your little.
  29. Have a Monster Mash dance party before breakfast on a school day to the Halloween music channel on Sirius XM radio.
  30. Go to a Cinespia outdoor movie screening in the Cemetery.
  31. Win a pumpkin decorating contest by making a “killer” Pumpkin Pie. (Get it?!)

And last, but not least, and not listed because it almost goes without saying, enjoy every second of this glorious autumnal experience.

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What I Did on My Summer Vacation

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32CBA579-6A56-45F6-A3B9-64F8D02D537FI’m imagining this essay penned on a double lined sheet of paper with a number two pencil, just as it would be in my youth. Alas, we’re many summers beyond those days, yet still I feel compelled to put pen to paper.  For a few reasons, the first of which is because it’s always a good feeling to document the days, the second and more important reason is because I did something extraordinary; I went to camp. Yep, you read that correctly. As a 38-year-old mama and wife, I packed up my things, shipped myself, my 6-year-old son and our bare necessities cross-country and headed back to my happy place. 

How did that come to pass, one might wonder? Perhaps we can rewind a bit. 

Six years ago I held a (pretty well-paying) corporate job and was nursing a child. When it came time to leave the comfortable maternity nest, I found myself inordinately envious of my childcare provider. So I did what any normal person would do in that situation; I put together an Excel chart of what it would cost to be a stay at home mom, presented it to my husband and traded in the corporate checks for payments in hugs and kisses. This kept me happy, for a while. Being a stay-at-home mom, I was able to unearth the creativity that lay dormant in a career in sales.

I created a homeschool environment for my son: Pacific View Preschool. Each week was a new letter, adventures and lessons were learned in accordance. The week of A saw us apple picking, going to the Santa Monica airport. B had us blueberry picking and hitting the beach. You get the picture. 

But so goes with kids, the days are long and the years are short.  Lo and behold we find ourselves on the cusp of kindergarten. C is ready for a new adventure and now, so am I. The question remained – what would that look like? I was overwhelmed with options to the point of paralysis. So, I finally heeded the advice I kept hearing in the umpteen yoga classes I took to try to figure out my next move; find your happy place. 

Where was I happiest in my life?

Without nary a hesitation, I answered, camp. Luckily for me, Caleb had trialed camp last summer and was game to go back. (He loved it as much as I did). So, off we went. Him to the Lower Village of Woodmont Day Camp and me, to the cooking cabin to create an eight-week curriculum teaching campers ages 3-16 how to find their way around a kitchen.

I approached the task as I would any other; with an Excel plan of attack. I created a weekly themed curriculum ranging from Superhero week, where I taught the kids about superfoods and how to make them deliciously crave worthy, to camp classics like Candy Sushi. As the weeks unfolded, so too did my plan for what I would do next with my life. The clarity of the camp kitchen allowed me to mix and fold and fashion a new idea of what my future could look like. I no longer felt overwhelmed. 

As the 38-day/8-week 2018 camp season came to a close and I packed up the kitchen for next summer, along with it, I packed up any hesitancy about how to enact change. 

Now, back in Los Angeles, the plan forward is clear. I’ll be teaching some kids classes at some new spaces, slowly building my name and brand until I can strike out on my own and give my creativity a brick-and-mortar place to call home. 

The journey is sure to be exciting, just as I hope C’s is in his new school. We’ll embark together, finding ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, one bite, one class and one step at a time. 

Bon appetite. 

Featurekins // Artifact Uprising

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Featurekins // Artifact UprisingFeaturekins // Artifact UprisingFeaturekins // Artifact Uprising

As Hallmark and pretty much every other advertiser is wont to remind us, Father’s Day is around the corner. That usually means commercials depicting happy 2 parent families with 2.5 kids, a dog and white picket fence gathering around a table and toasting dad, grandpa and all the patriarchal figures amongst us. But for many of us, this isn’t what life looks like. Granted, some brands are getting better at more accurately representing what family means these days and even folks themselves are getting in on the action of celebrating and sharing their non-traditional stories. Take, for example, the recent video that went viral this past Mother’s Day where a grown man recorded a message for his birth mother to thank her for giving him life.
Here at Babiekins, we wanted to celebrate family in all forms and the love that is manifested however said family may be constructed. To do this, we’re sharing stories on the blog of non-conventional Father’s Days celebrating all of those who stand in for the role. And we’ve teamed up with our friends over at Artifact Uprising to help create gifts that capture this incredible love.
If you don’t know what Artifact Uprising is, allow me to introduce this incredible company to you. Based in Colorado, they provide Instagram worthy photo quality in real life. The products they offer are seemingly endless; think Hardcover books, softcover books, wedding albums, every day print sets) and can be coupled with design savvy photo holders crafted from eco-conscious materials. We’re currently crushing on the Wood Block + Print Sets and because we think you’ll like it to, Artifact Uprising is offering our community a discount. Use code (insert code here) to receive (enter percentage here) off of your order.
And be sure to share the love back with us! We’d love to see what you made and hear your stories of how Father’s Day has touched your lives. #ArtifactUprisingFathersDay #BabiekinsFathersDay