Raising Men’s Festive Series: An Introduction & First Post: KIDS PART 1

This time of year is always busy and expensive for the Bettles Clark family. 20 October is Graeme’s birthday, then 30 October is our wedding anniversary, 9 November is Paul’s birthday, then 29 November is Benjamin’s birthday. 23 December is my mom’s birthday, then 25 December is Christmas, THEN 28 December is my dad’s birthday. I know, right?

That’s 7 big family occasions in just over two months. Then right after all that its New Year’s Eve, back to work, back to school, then we start right up again with Noah’s birthday on 5 February, Valentine’s Day, Easter… and then we start  with winter shopping again – brand new wardrobes for both boys as they’d have outgrown all their things by then. This family thing takes a lot of planning and monies to get things done in a semi-organized / don’t take my kids away from me or alert authorities sort of way.

We like to get Christmas going early. I start shopping in October otherwise I’m either broke in January, or I end up using all my holiday savings on Christmas gifts and the nanny’s bonus, which is not ideal. Luckily it wasn’t that bad last year because Cape Town’s entertainment is cheap or free – beaches, forests, parks, picnics, hikes, mountains, exploring…

So as I plan things I’ll be telling you about it: Holiday activities, gift ideas, Christmas dinner recipes, shopping secrets, table settings, weekend getaways, adventures and any other great things that I find for singles, couples and families in Durban and Cape Town and a little bit of Joburg too. I’ll be talking about gifting ideas for kids first, which I’d like to touch on now.

I’m always looking for unusual gifts for the boys. The things they play with most is their craft boxes, torches, transformers and space guns. I was looking at local site, Hello Pretty (Raising Men is not affiliated with this brand). They basically stock local creatives’ things – like a mini Design Indaba, but an online shop with a big variety of creative and unusual things. Here are some really cool things I saw for kids, but there are obviously things for grown ups there too.  

Girls love super heroes too, and this non-banded cape is pretty darn cool. This designer has them for boys too, and a variety of masks. These are great for Summer outdoor play. You can maybe give your kid their own superhero name, like we call Noah SUPER-NUUUUU. Truth.

So talk to me about your kid / grandchild / nephew / niece’s drawings. You have hundreds, right? Maybe sit down and do one together – make it special, say that they must draw what they want their BEST friend to look like or their favorite imaginary animal. THEN you can send the drawing in to these creatives, and they will MAKE THE THING YOUR CHILD DREW. I know, I can’t actually deal. I am definitely doing this one. I think I’ll ask Noah to draw his family and have a little doll of each family member for fun play. Can you IMAGINE their faces when they unwrap their drawing and the dolls? Can you even actually imagine the magic? I’m going to ask Ben to draw a Spider – he is obsessed with spiders (kill me now)  

A strap-on dinosaur tail. Do I really need to talk more about this – what would you like me to say? I’m getting two, obviously. Green and blue, obviously 

This one is a little bit out of my range (considering I need to buy two of everything) but how rad are these elephant drawing tables? And also these little rocking deers.

The there are other little bits like beautifully handmade clothing, handmade felt toys, décor, origami wall decals / stickers and loads of other little creative things. I hope that you found a few good ideas here – I think these are all wonderfully unusual and creative gifts for little minds and imaginations. I’ll be back soon with more things from other places. Send this on to other parents you know, because finding something really great that you know your kid will love for a long time is pretty tricky sometimes. More pretties here