Today I am sharing things our family (our 2 and 7 year old) loved in January 2026:
01// Lumie Sunrise Alarm Clock - One of my favourite things to have at home this winter - it has an incredible range of light that mimics sunrise and sunset plus bright daylight. It really seems to make a difference to everyone's mood in our household when we have this on during the darker UK winter days. Easy for my children to use the lamp to turn it on or make it lighter / darker.
02// Claude & Co Moon and Stars Sweater - A beautiful, organic cotton jumper with a lovely moon and star pattern, made by a small business. It is oversized so my 2 year old daughter wears the age 1-2 and it will fit her for a long time. It is soft and seems really comfortable to wear, plus it is easy for her to put on herself as it's so slouchy and stretchy.
03// Arctic Animals Printable Wall Art by DaniWilliamsArt on Etsy - We love this very talented artists' work and she offers a lot of her designs as downloadable printable PDFs, which I really appreciate. I can purchase, download and print it at home within minutes and the level of detail in all of the illustrations is incredible. We hang ours on wooden poster frames (link here) and usually use stick on command hooks (link here) to make life easier and not leave marks on the wall!
04// Pocket Eyewitness Books by DK - My son's absolute favourite at the moment, he has a collection of them and he asks to read some of a book every evening at bedtime. So many interesting facts and great photos in these little books - warning, the font is quite small in these books! 😉
05// I taught my son to make these origami chatterboxes - he was so impressed! And I enjoyed reminiscing about how many of these I used to make when I was a child. Who remembers these?!
06// Our visual packing checklist that has been a game changer for leaving the house in the mornings with my 2 year old. It is an editable Canva template where you drag and drop photos of your child and their most used items, designed for prereaders, so that they can get involved and find / pack their own regularly used items for outings. Grab it for free currently on my blog and enjoy calmer mornings!
07// Ikea dolls house - I didn't know if my 2 year old daughter would be a little young for this but I observed that she loved looking after baby dolls and offered her this dolls house with furniture on a smaller scale. I was surprised to see how long she played independently with it. I bought some modern dolls house furniture to go with it but it was a lot of items! So I have less out and rotate every so often.
08// Bliss balls recipe - On repeat in our house this month. Our children and all adults who have tried them, love these. I can't believe how simple they are! This recipe is alongside many others in the brilliant Little Bites eBook, and Holly kindly shares this recipe separately here too. I experimented with mango in place of the blueberry in this batch and I also feel they are plenty sweet enough and I don't add any honey or maple syrup to them.
09// A beautiful book encouraging us to pause and pay attention to the world around us. I feel that toddlers naturally help us with this too; their curiosity for so many things that we would often rush past in our day to day lives. I happened to find it available in our local library which was a win! I have our online library catalogue saved to my homepage on my phone so that I can quickly see if any book is at our library.
10// Liewood's step stool is beautiful in our bathroom and light enough for my toddler to easily pick up and carry around. It has a little gap in the shape of a hole which makes it even easier to pick up. I found this on Vinted, a UK preloved app (it's worth having a saved search for these as they seem quite rare second hand). A word of warning - these only take up to 50kg so not suitable for most adults to sit on - ask us how we know...
11// Dobble card game - A fun and addictive discovery this winter, my son and I play it so much and often even a game before bedtime. The game is simple - there is always one picture on a card that matches another - the first to spot and call it out, gets to keep that card. This game is portable and would be great for when you need to wait in queues, waiting rooms, travelling on the train, etc.
12// Children's knife set - This sweet set of 2 dog knives are perfect for toddlers who are joining in the kitchen and cooking prep in the family. One is serrated and one is smooth. They are somehow sharp but do not cut - quite impressive! Similar to a regular butter knife I would say. Best for cutting softer fruit and vegetables or harder ones that have been pre-cut into thinner strips by an adult.
