Hank’s school had an auction benefit a little while ago, and I asked some Internet friends for donations. As a thank you to the folks who donated, I thought I’d do some giveaways here as well.
Wee Wood of the Month Club from Little Alouette
These pretty wooden toys and teethers feel good in the hand, encourage imaginative play, and aren’t finished with paint or varnish that will make your baby ill. Bonus. Some toys are unfinished, others finished only with a light coat of organic flax seed oil, so all the toys are utterly chewable.
Strongman from Dria Peterson
Dria Peterson’s handmade strongman protects your little one from nightmares, and encourages him or her to hang out with carnies.
Happy Trails Felt Doll Journal from Suzy Ultman
If you kept a journal as a kid, you know the pleasure of paging back through your gift wishlists, childhood heartbreaks, and lemonade stand earnings. This diary doesn’t have a lock, which saves parents the trouble of picking it.
Hand-Knit Pony from Woolies
This tiny hand-knit pony is just right for chubby little fists. Twice the appeal of My Little Pony, with none of the offgassing.
Play Scarves from Birch Leaf Designs
Simple play scarves to use as capes, forts, or baby doll blankets.
A Leaf Puzzle from Just Hatched
This handmade wooden puzzle has the names of the tree behind each corresponding leaf. Yeah. Your kid is gonna be smarter than you.
Letter Flashcards from Pollywog Learning Products
Tactile letter flashcards are made to help little ones trace the letters with their fingers. The letters are fashioned from sandpaper with a starting-point dot on each. Literacy! Hells yes.
Please leave a comment with your favorite childhood memory to enter, and please only enter once. I’ll announce the winner on Monday. Tune in next week for a science toys giveaway, and big thanks to all the artists and merchants for their donations.
Mighty Girl 
We lived at the edge of undeveloped farm land and I loved spending time outside playing with my brother and dogs and having adventures. I love this giveaway – thanks!
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My favorite memory is seeing my grandfather’s old blue Ford truck in the driveway every afternoon after school. He always had a stick of Big Red or Juicy Fruit in one of his shirt pockets, and I had to guess which one held my treat. :0)
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The Crick!
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Watching my Dad flock a huge Christmas tree outside with fake snow from a can. Knowing that my parents would make sure Christmas morning that a mountain of presents would be under that tree for my 3 sisters & I, no matter what! They always made it happen 🙂
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Reading my mother’s girlhood books–“Pollyanna”, “Rosemary”, the Cherry Ames series–with her name and date written in the front, trying to imagine her as actually a girl, like me.
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The “A Leaf Puzzle” reminded me of my childhood. I used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents house. I would wake up early in the morning before anyone else was up and put together puzzles. I had a bunch of wooden puzzles that my grandfather made for me. It was a fun, quiet time that I missed as I got older.
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I think one of the best memories is from when my grandparents lived on 20 acres of land…me and my cousins would spend ALL DAY playing in our tree fort and exploring the woods surrounding the house. Endless entertainment!
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Making tents under the dining room table and playing there for hours! I’d even decorate my “house” with picture frames and flowers in vases.
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My mom running from the car, where I was waiting, up through the dandelions in our yard to grab something else from the house. It’s the only memory I have of my mother walking; rheumatoid arthritis permanently bound her to a wheelchair when I was 4.
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My grandparents took me to Pensacola, FL every spring break growing up. Now my mother goes and takes my neice. My daughter will join them next year, I can’t wait!
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After dinner while my mom did the dishes, my dad and I would take a walk to a nearby park. Along the way he would grab bunches of red berries from trees that we passed, I would drop them on the ground leaving a trail so that we could find our way home.
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Playing dress up in my grandmother’s attic with her fab hats and jewelry!!
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Crabbing in Beaufort, South Carolina, with chicken tied at the ends of strings and a boiling pot waiting on the kitchen stove.
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The kisses my mom would give me every night, and when she would walk out the door, I would call her back in again for more. She always came back, sometimes more than once. She made me feel safe and loved.
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I remember being so excited for my family’s annual car trip to the beach that I could not fall asleep the night before. Need to recapture some of that lovely anticipation for my next vacation!
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Playing in the lake at my grandparents’ house.
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Playing on the “tree horse” in my grandmother’s yard. It was this strange formation where two trees had grown together. There was an arch low enough to the ground for all of us kids to climb on and pretend it was a horse. Hours, days, and summers of fun.
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I remember being in a classroom with the beautiful spring sunlight shining outside, looking through the window at a field filled with grass and dandelions. I had a slightly headachy feeling from being indoors, reading books on a beautiful day. The clock was ticking loudly and it was almost 3:18 when we would be out the door for the weekend. Oh, the anticipation.
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On warm summer evenings, my parents would sometimes fill the plastic baby pool in the yard with bubbles and my brothers and sister and I would take our baths outside.
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We grew up in the suburbs, but for the summer we would go up to New Hampshire in an old old house with drinking water from a stream and garbage you had to bring to the dump. My brothers and sisters HAD to play board games with me because there was no TV and there were only so many hours you could read in a day. We’d go for six weeks, almost the whole summer, and swim in the lake and eat amazing corn and play chinese checkers and be more nature-y than any of my suburban friends. I even learned to shear a sheep and spin wool!
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My brother and I loved “fishing” for tadpoles in my grandparents’ creek using Dixie Cups from the bathroom. That creek seemed so big as a kid but it’s barely a puddle when I see it as an adult.
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sitting on my grandfather’s lap, him asking how old i am, and me triumphantly holding up a single finger.
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Fave memory is getting ice cream off the ice cream truck on a hot summer day with my cousins.
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Sitting in the way back (the back-facing fold-down seat) of my mom’s wooden-panel station wagon and waving the peace sign at the people in the cars all around us. So ’70s!
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Playing pretend with my cousin in the backyard – she liked to play Star Wars and always got to be Princess Leia, I liked to play mermaid and always made her be the fisherman. And since we grew up in Minnesota, it was always an ice fisherman. Hopefully my mermaids had good parkas!
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Oh, these are beautiful! One of my favorite childhood memories is every night after my bath when my Dad would read aloud to my sister and I. We started with Winnie the Pooh and moved up to reading the Little House on the Prairie books.
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A great memory I have is putting together puzzles with my brother, we would line them all up in a row. It felt like there would be miles of puzzles, but it was most likely only 10 or so.
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This week I have been remembering the joyous first visit to the library after summer vacation started. The prospect of a summer of lying around reading books (Judy Blume! Nancy Drew! Trixie Belden! etc.) was so delicious. I miss summer vacation. I miss uniterrupted hours of reading.
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My dad playing “Linus and Lucy” on the piano.
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Vacations on Chincoteague Island! I loved the Misty books when I was a kid.
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My favourite memory: sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to eat brownies my mum had baked. To cover up my crime, I’d always blame mice. The next day, my mum usually would come up with a wonderful story about those very mice and why they always wanted brownies.
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All my favorite childhood memories are with my grandmother, Nana. But what stands out the most are the times she would make fried vhicken and limeade for my brother and I as an after school snack. Admonishing us repeatedly, while we ate greedily, not to tell our strictly vegetetarian mother.
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My favorite memories are of playing on the beach with my brother, without any worries or any cares other than when we could convince my mother to take us back out swimming in the ocean again.
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Vacations to my grandparents’ house in Tennessee – waking up to my grandmother’s big southern breakfast, exploring the woods behind their house, trips to see Rock City.
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Having a 7 month old has been making me think a lot about my childhood lately. One memory I keep coming back to is not so much a specific moment but a feeling–sitting with my mom in the warm yellow glow that bathed our dining room table winter afternoons after school, just chatting about my day. I remember feeling valued, secure, and loved.
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summer camp, every summer in Occidental, near the Russian River. Now, my son will be going to overnight camp for the 1st time this summer…hopefully he will also cherish the awesomeness that is summer camp.
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We spent our summers at a tiny cabin in Northern Minnesota where there were kids up and down the row. We swam, water-skied, built bird houses, golfed, and goofed-off for three months straight. Paradise!
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In the summertime, I would pitch a tent in the backyard and it would be my “room” for about a week. Since I was a scaredy-cat, I would beg my grandpa to sleep in it with me. My grandpa was a big guy, and this was a tiny kids tent. He slept in it with me every night and listened to my kid-talk and still got up in the morning at 5 to go to work. I love my grandpa so much.
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Maybe this isn’t my favorite memory, but it’s a good one.
When I was 6, my parents told me that we were moving to Michigan to live on a lake. I thought I would have to swim to school, backpack and all, and was distraught over the fact that my books would get wet everyday. When we arrived at the house (lakefront property), I felt like an idiot.
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One of my favorite childhood memories started off with unfortunate circumstances. While performing a self-choreographed dance routine at an elementary school talent show I fell flat on my face and ran off the stage in tears. Sad, I know. After calming myself down I wanted immediately back on that stage to show everyone what I was made of. I danced through the performance without a mistake and was met with roaring applause from the audience. This memory always makes me smile, recalling how good it felt to give myself another chance.
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Favorite childhood memory: Hanging out in the garage with my dad, who is something like the ultimate handyman. We’d have to take “cat breaks” so I could sit on his lap in the rocking chair by the wood stove and pet kittens.
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i was one of those lucky little girls who actually got a horse – i had always wanted one and we adopted one when i was 11, which was totally the highlight of my life.
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My favourite childhood memory is deciding as a preschooler with my neighbourhood best friend that it was such a sunny day we should get into our swimsuits and lie on towels in the backyard. Our mothers helped us, even though it was March, in Canada. We didn’t sunbathe long, but I can still remember how happy I was to be welcoming the sunny weather.
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My parents took me to one of their aunts farms. I had baby calves suck my fingers, met some barn cats, tried to catch crickets and had some good ol’ farm dinners.
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Driving in the truck with Dad, I can only see the fat umbrella leaves of the banana trees when we drive away from the plantation. They are rubbery green and splitting into shivering fingers in the wind. The dashboard rises too high to see the bulby trunks and alien flowers and the fire coloured dirt. The smell of sunburnt earth and wet living things fades into the diesel fumes from the truck. The engine vibrates through my eyeballs and I worry they might be shaking loose. I hear the bunches of unripened bananas in the back shift and settle with the rumble. Some fall over the side and are lost to the mountain and some burst their skins and paint their flesh over the floor. The tang and bitterness of banana skins is all over my hands. It lingers under my fingernails for days alongside plantation dirt and the grit from Dad’s tools.
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I grew up living on a pond that had ducks and geese fly in and nest for the summer. Every day I would go feed the ducks (my favorites were the babies!) from my hands. I absolutely loved it. We had the backyard with the most duck poop in the whole neighborhood!
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Playing house inside a circle of mammoth sunflowers that my Mother would plant for us every summer. She’d plant them in a horseshoe shape and then tie the tops together 🙂
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One of my favorite childhood memories is of going fishing, feeding the ducks and having picnics at the park with my grandparents. My grandmother would pack sandwiches in wax paper and a thermos of tea. I can still remember watching her reapply her lipstick in the mirror after lunch.
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My grandparents picking me up from school and taking me out for ice cream on Friday afternoons.
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Driving my grandmother’s jeep through her orange groves in Florida. I was 10. 🙂
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