My first good pressie under £10

Here we go with the first of my under £10 gift ideas. I thought that it was only right to start here are as I found this lovely company at bubble this week.

As you know we have an overriding theme of bunnies, owls and pandas here at mummy tips - so I was quite literally beside myself when I clapped eyes on these cute little paper panda balloons (yes I know that I really should get out more).

I got talking to the lady on the stand, she was lovely and very interesting. I told her of my plight for gifts and whilst talking to her it suddenly dawned on me - that with three children in classes of 30, the majority of which have a birthday party each year I am 3 x 30 x £10 each =£900 on birthday pressies in just one year.

OMG - we are no longer going to the opening of an envelope. Our party attendence will be strictly monitored as will the gifts.

So I am happy to report that the paper panda ballon is a bargain at £2, given along with the lovely owl notebook at £3.50, packaged in a nice reusable box - is quite frankly job done.

The paper balloons are available in other styles and are made from bright, crisp environmentally friendly paper. It comes flat and you simply blow in the small hole to inflate.

The plain paper notebook has a matt finish cover with a pattern on the inside of the sleeve too. 64 pages 17cm x 13.5cm

All available from the lovely online boutique Petra Bose, they have lots of other beautiful gifts if you have more budget to play with - including some really nice Owl canvasses that DinoBoy has fallen in love with (why do I get the feeling that I know where the money from his M&S shoot next week is going?!)

Standard delivery is £3.95 but to be fair I would buy for more than one party at a time - and they take PayPal, which I do think is a bonus. I always have money hanging around in there from ebay stuff that I have sold - so to me it doesn't really feel like I am paying for anything at all.

Like free stuff and yo can't beat that!

Not quite Fathers Day

Things seem to have gone a bit crazy here over the last few days. I've been working so hard by day that I haven't had five minutes to blog.

I am calling this my official lunch break - and if the phone stops ringing for a couple of minutes I might actually be able to get this post live!

I did have some big grand plan to do a whole week of gift ideas for fathers day this week - but that hasn't really fallen into place. I've been searching around for funky and exciting stuff that the kids could actually buy for Mr MummyTips without me having to open my purse. Alas, as far as we got was a giant Toblerone - and to be fair they have been wanting to chomp their way through that. Their view is that daddy will thank them as he is once again watching his waistline.

Of course I may have had more of an investment in finding some value gifts if I hadn't already been and bought him a new iPhone. FunnyGirl and I picked it up a couple of weeks ago, the day before they announced the new one as it happens and in our inability to keep a secret for more than five minutes we had to hand it straight over. So fathers day is done and dusted in our house, all except for the battle over giant Toblerone that is.

As you know, my crew all have their little collections. DinoBoy and his owls, ModelGirl and her bunnies and FunnyGirl and her pandas. Her bedroom is infact like a mad Chinese breeding centre these days but whilst she keeps it tidy I don't complain.

I was looking around for a light summer coat for ModelGirl as to her utter disgust her very expensive silver Oilily mac that she bought with her own hard earned cash has moved into the hand-me-down realm. When I came across this very cute little number. Yes I am aware that it isn't remotely like a coat but you know how easy it is to get side tracked.

Not just cute but hand knitted too this little rucksack is just the right size for carrying your essentials (though to be fair FunnyGirl would have to engage in a major downsizing exercise if she wanted to fit all her stuff in).

Made from 100% cotton  £30 from Elias & Grace, who do incidentally have some rather nice coats too!