Beautiful winter warmers for your nestlings

How's the weather where you are? Here at nestling central things are really starting to cool off. Luckily for you nestling is currently offering 30% off all winter clothes so you can set your nestlings up for a snug and warm winter. Just use the coupon code '30bunny' at the checkout before 30 April 2014. As well as 30% off winter clothes it will also give you 30% off all baby accessories.

Here are just a couple from our huge selection of gorgeous baby outfits:

And some beautiful clothes for older children:

Choose from our fabulous range of winter sleepwear:

And there's plenty more where they came from:

Little Wings

Fox & Finch

Milky

Bebe by Minihaha

Happy winter shopping from the team at nestling.

Royal visit

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, together with their baby son Prince George arrived in New Zealand today. They will have a bit over a week of official engagements and sightseeing prior to heading to Australia on Wednesday 16 April (just in time for Easter!)

On Good Friday the Royal couple will visit the Sydney Royal Easter Show and are expected to take Prince George with them. On Easter Sunday they are still in Sydney and will be attending a service at St Andrew's Cathedral after which they will take a family trip to Taronga Zoo. Apparently the bilby enclosure is going to be named after Prince George so he's sure to love that! For more on that story follow the link Taronga helps celebrate the birth of the Royal baby

After a quick trip to Brisbane they will head back to Sydney and then on to Uluru, where they will camp for the night. From there the Royals go to Adelaide and Canberra - where they will attend an ANZAC Day march and commemorative service. They leave Australia later the same day.

Many parallels can be drawn between this Royal visit and that of Charles and Diana in 1983 when they toured Australia and New Zealand with a nine month old Prince William. However, this will surely be a happier trip than that one. Princess Diana had fought hard to bring William with her, a move that even Charles did not support, and apparently William's presence made their trip more difficult. It is hard to believe that in the space of one generation attitudes and perceptions have changed so much.

 The young Prince William was based at a farm in New South Wales so Princess Diana and Prince Charles had to keep returning there every few days, which slowed down their trip considerably. This trip has also been credited as starting "Dianamania", where the Royal couple, and particularly Diana, drew huge crowds. Prince Charles couldn't understand why Diana was so popular and it is alleged by household staff that he resented her popularity. They were both unprepared for the size of the crowds and the large numbers of photographers and Diana found the whole experience quite unsettling.

Courtesy L J Holden

After attending a ceremonial welcome at Government House in Wellington today, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have a day off tomorrow - presumably to get over any jet lag. They will then go on to attend 25 different engagements during their 20 day visit to New Zealand and Australia.  

We wish them a safe and happy tour down under!

The team at nestling.

Hot looks for Winter 2014

This winter's styles are bright and beautiful. With a range of fabrics from the soft and sheer, through to the warmest wool and cord. A number of brands have gone for strong primary colours - particularly red for girls and green for boys (the Milky puffer vest springs to mind).

Milky - green puffer vest

Boys' zip up hoodies in various weights are popular, with navy being the colour of the season. These can be worn with a range of bottoms - from track pants, to jeans, right through to stylish twill pants. New York designers Andy & Evan have provided a great range for this winter and and Purebaby have some fabulous choices. Fox & Finch have given us some fun tees, sticking with that perennial boys' favourite theme of dinosaurs, while their baby range, Bebe by Minihaha as always, incorporate practicality into each design. This is especially noticeable in their range of boys' pants.

Andy & Evan - blue zip up with hood

The girls'dresses feature lots of bold colours, with stripes and spots being used to good effect. Cardigans and vests add some weight for the cooler days and leggings are really coming in to their own - moving from a garment to cover the legs to a fashion statement in their own right. Paper Wings, and their baby range, Little Wings always do this well and each garment is a whimsical creation which can be worn with almost anything - limited only by your imagination! One Red Fly offer a range of stylish and sophisticated pieces for older girls and Fox & Finch have, among other things, come up with the chic fake fur vest which can be worn over almost anything. Fabrik have utilised stars and spots in their designs, which this season are more edgy and less vintage-inspired.

Fabrik - confetti dress

There are lots of beautiful muted colours for babies, with white and grey combining with baby pink and soft blue. Wilson & Frenchy, a new brand to nestling, do this well as do Purebaby, who also incorporate bright pinks and reds in their designs. Taking the lead in the colourful stakes is Hootkid with bright, multi-coloured stripes, stars, hearts and more. 

Hootkid - Hand on your heart dress

Huckleberry Lane sleepwear incorporates a bit of everything - navy, pink, red, spots and stripes. But not all in the one garment!

Another new brand to nestling, Cable Baby will be in store very soon and we are looking forward to seeing their baby jumpers and leggings. Also due to arrive any day are our range of Acorn hats and beanies. So rug up and enjoy the rapidly approaching cooler weather.

Don't forget to sign up to our newsletter to receive a great member discount on all full price purchases.

The team at nestling.

Ten children's book suggestions by age

Reading, and being read to, are such important building blocks for children's education and learning. So, for your reading pleasure (and that of your nestlings) we have compiled a list of some of our favourite stories for each stage of your child's development. We hope you get hours of pleasure from these suggestions.

Babies & toddlers

Each Peach Pear Plum - Janet & Allan Ahlberg

Guess How Much I Love You - Sam McBratney

Where's Spot? - Eric Hill

Maisy's Bedtime - Lucy Cousins

Can't you Sleep, Little Bear? - Martin Waddell

There's a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake - Hazel Edwards

Rumble in the Jungle - Giles Andreae & David Wojtowycz

Where is the Green Sheep? - Mem Fox & Judy Horacek

The Cat in the Hat - Dr Seuss

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle

Preschool - young readers

Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy - Lynley Dodd

The Tiger who came to Tea - Judith Kerr

Lost and Found - Oliver Jeffers

Stick Man - Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler

We Honestly Can Look After Your Dog (Charlie & Lola) - Lauren Child

Meg and Mog - Helen Nicoll & Jan Pienkowski

Mr Men and Little Miss stories - Roger Hargreaves

Knuffle Bunny - Mo Willems

Madeline - Ludwig Bemelmans

One Snowy Night - Nick Parks

Older readers

The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick

Alice Miranda at School - Jacqueline Harvey

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J K Rowling

Sophie the Awesome - Lara Bergen

Beware of the Storybook Wolves - Lauren Child

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Jeff Kinney

The Complete Chronicles of Narnia - C S Lewis

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Happy reading!

The team at nestling.

Kids' birthday parties

   

Has your nestling had their first party? If not, brace yourself! Children's parties are totally different to the ones I remember from my childhood.

For a start almost all of our parties were at home. We didn't have one every year, nor did we expect to, and although I went to a co-ed school I don't think I ever invited a boy. In my defense neither did any of the other girls in my class - and I probably wasn't ever invited to a boy's birthday party.

I'm sure my mother got great pleasure out of choosing what clothes I would wear to a party, but I usually didn't enjoy wearing them. I remember the humiliation of having my photo taken standing out the front of our house (yes, where everyone driving down the street could see me), holding a present and wearing a lemon coloured crocheted poncho over a brown paisley shirt and yellow, well, I can only describe them as "slacks". In case you haven't guessed I was a child in the 70s. I know retro is cool but there are some things that will never be in fashion and I am pretty sure canary yellow slacks and lemon crocheted ponchos fit into the latter category!

We always played games and if you were lucky you might win a prize, but you certainly didn't expect to, and it would have been unusual for the birthday child to win at Pass the Parcel. One of my favourite games involved rolling a dice to get doubles. If you managed to roll doubles you had to quickly (because the rest of the partygoers kept rolling) put on a hat, scarf and gloves then pick up a knife and fork and try to cut bite sized pieces off of a family block of chocolate. As you can imagine, or maybe remember if you've played it too, there was a lot of putting on hats and scarves then taking them off because someone else had rolled double. Fun!

Party food was very much a 'one size fits all' approach and usually the same offerings of: little boys (frankfurters); fairy bread; chips; sausage rolls; biscuits and cake, all washed down with green, red or orange water cordial. I don't remember there being any party bags either. But you always got a piece of birthday cake (wrapped up in a paper napkin) to take home with you. Mind you the birthday cake would have been a normal, fairly plain, homemade cake, possibly with candles but none of this decorating in the shape of your favourite TV character - not that there were very many of those to choose from at the time...

I remember someone having a party once where they took us all to the pictures, amid much muttering about such decadence from all the other parents! When I got to high school there was the occasional roller skating party, and that was really stepping up a notch.

Ah, simpler times. But those days are gone. The world of party planning for the under 10s can be a rather scary place. However I think you will just have to work it out for yourself as there are too many minefields for me to guide you through - cost, venue, numbers (and more importantly who gets invited and who doesn't), duration, food (especially the cake), what to wear (you and your child), when to open presents, the list goes on and on.

So, good luck and enjoy the party!!

The team at nestling.