Forever Bespoke Personalised Childrens Phonetic Name Frames

Lara and Holly love sharing a room together and later this year we plan to move them into bunk beds and redecorate so that the room can no longer be referred to as "Lara's old room".  In an attempt to try and make the room feel like it belongs to both of them, we have put up these two beautiful personalised illustrated framed names from Forever Bespoke.

I always love a personalised gift but these name frames are showstoppers.  Each letter is illustrated by hand and then laid out and printed especially for your child on white paper and then framed in a chunky white frame that will look good in any room, alongside any colour of decoration.  Each letter tells a story using sounds beginning with the letter such as H for Horse, wearing a Hat or O for Owl playing the Oboe.  Lara's name features an alien, and aardvark, a lemur and a rabbit in a rocket!  Holly's features a lion and a yeti playing a yoyo.

Holly has just started learning her letter sounds and shapes.  She instantly recognised the H for Holly and then ever since we put these personalised name pictures up on their bedroom wall, Holly has talked about the different sounds such as L for Lion.  This is the kind of gift that you can give to your child from birth and it will live with them through their first learning and reading experiences, right through until adulthood.

The framed names are  49 x 21 cm and both of them fit well alongside one another, even though the girls names are different lengths.  They have taken pride of place on the bedroom wall and I think that, even if nothing else in the room survives out redecoration attempts later in the year, these beautiful framed phonetic names are here to stay.

A personalised framed name print from Forever Bespoke costs £39.99 for upto 12 characters.  I think they make a beautiful gift and they are just the sort of gift that we would normally buy for the girls as a non-chocolate Easter present.

Nursery Wall Stickers by Witty Doodle

As you know, I've become a bit of a fan of wall art stickers since discovering how much of a big difference they can make to a room without the need to entirely re-decorate.  These nursery art wall stickers from Witty Doodle are just a little bit different; they've been designed specifically with babies in mind.

Witty Doodle introduced us to their range of Little Journey nursery wall art; we chose the Safari range.  The set starts with a single, large bold sticker designed for newborns and very tiny babies who can only distinguish strong contrasting colours, geometric shapes and lots of black and white repetitive patterns.  As you baby gets older (about 4 months) the set includes some extra bold stickers with bright colours and smiley faces; a chance to recognise first animals.  These stickers are designed to stimulate vision and promote brain development.

Then finally, once your baby starts to notice the stickers and look at complex things in more detail, there are lots of additional smaller stickers to add to the scene to help promote curiosity and interest as your baby's vision develops.  The stickers are made from a material which makes them really easy to re-position.  The material is very different to other wall stickers I have used, much thicker and less "sticky" so I was confident that they would withstand tiny grabby hands and thought I would let the girls choose where to position them.  You can easily peel them off and re-position them to motivate further interest and keep your toddler thinking and exploring the images.

Our nursery had been looking a bit plain and these Witty Doodle nursery stickers have totally transformed the room.  It was so easy to apply them compared to other wall stickers I have used and they haven't left the wall feeling sticky.  I'm really impressed. These Witty Doodle nursery sticker sets cost £55 and you can also buy matching prints and canvases to complete out the room.

You can find Witty Doodle at wittydoodle.co.uk and on twitter and facebook.

Graham & Brown Children's Room Decorations Review

An interesting thing happened this weekend.  A bit of an experiment.  I'm not sure if it is going to be a total disaster or a moment of genius.  We moved the two girls into the same bedroom!  It is something we have been considering doing for a little while now and we were vaguely aiming for Christmas but things were sped up a bit after our recent self-catering holiday on which the girls shared a room with some success.  To make the "new" room feel like home, the girls were sent a few room decorations from Graham & Brown as a gift to give their bedroom a bit of character.

Because the room move is a bit of an experiment we aren't planning on totally redecorating or painting the girls room right now but we did want to give it a bit of a refresh and some simple wall decorations like these Lemon Ribbon Animal designs from Graham & Brown are a great idea for a quick (or temporary) change of style in a kids room.

I applied a line of these Lemon Ribbon Animal Sancturary Mini Foam Elements across the top and sides of each of the girls' beds.  Each foam piece is between 5 and 15cm tall.  The set contains 24 foam shapes and lots of sticky foam pads with which to attach them.  At present, I'm trying not to think about how hard it will be to remove the foam pads when we do eventually decide to redecorate the room at some point in the future (although I am reliably informed that steam will help)!  Because the Lemon Ribbon foam animal shape wall stickers apply using sticky pads, they are very easy to put up and don't require any tools (or skill!)

At the edge of the bedroom there was a few marks where the previous owners obviously had a mirror.  The wall has been filled and could really do with painting so in order to detract from the marks, I placed a line of canvas blocks in a matching Lemon Ribbon design.  The Lemon Ribbon Animal Sancturary Canvas Blocks are 15 cm square and have a single hole in the back of the block that you can use to hang on a picture hook.  The blocks are very light.  Each has an image featuring the same fun pink and purple creatures from the Lemon Ribbon design but each block is slightly different.

I love the Lemon Ribbon animal designs because they are girly without being branded (my girls have enough Peppa Pig and Disney Princess stuff already thank you!)  I think they nicely bridge the toddler - girl age gap between my two daughters.  The range also includes a lamp, wall stickers and wall paper.

There are lots of different wall art, wall stickers and kids decor ideas at Graham & Brown - lots of recognisable kids characters along with beautiful, slightly different designs like these.