Memorial Day is here which means goodbye wool, hello breezy, beautiful linen. Even when it comes to your kids' playthings . Have you ever loved a doll so much that you wanted to hug it? Wait, that's ridiculous, even for a rhetorical ques…
If bobblehead dolls have taught us anything, it's that adults can now play with toys in public. Hence my complete lack of shame in adoring the simple yet amazing hand-painted peg dolls from mooshoopork on Etsy. Especially the sassy pirat…
It turns out our Valentine's Day card contest did more than help us put together one cool card, it also introduced us to some really exciting new artists. One of them is Montreal's Stay Home , which makes all kinds of happy little felt t…
You don't need us to tell you about the latest Elmo toy or Hannah Montana guitar, so we work hard to point you towards toys and other playthings from small companies or independent artists that you might not know about yet. After a year …
Cool Mom Picks readers know I have a serious soft spot for handmade dolls, which goes way back to the days that my mom taught me how to stuff an old stocking with batting and stitch the face to make a nose. But the incredible handmade do…
I'm a little unbalanced when it comes to "Japanese cute" (kawaii!) like Momiji Friendship Dolls , the uber-trendy little resin dolls from London's Artforum, which are a modern and more affordable spin on the traditional Japanese wooden K…
I've become a strong advocate of paper dolls since realizing that my girls can spend hours entertaining themselves with them. The only issue? That whole paper thing. Let's just say freak decapitations are are not an uncommon occurrence. …
When I had my second baby, one thing that helped my daughter (then just barely two) was to be able to mimic the things I was doing so she could feel like she was "helping." I still have awesome pictures of her little dolls in diapers tha…
While most toy companies start basic and work outward from there, I think it's really interesting that CMP fave (and pretty much every kids boutique's fave), Blabla Kids , has evolved from their quirky and sometimes irreverent line of fa…
At two, my youngest daughter is already into dolls in a way that her big sister never was. She pushes them in strollers, shares her dessert with them, and gives them rides on the bulldog--much to the bulldog's dismay. She tucks her dolls…
With two craft-loving girls, I have enough kids' art supplies in my home to start a small store. That said, I have never seen anything like the adorable set of paint-your-own nesting dolls from Kookle and know my kids would go ga-ga over…
Someone gave my son an old-fashioned yo-yo. (As soon as I figure out who it was, I'm going to hurt them. Or at least ask them to spackle the new dents in my walls.) But a yo-yo doll has nothing to do with yo-yos -- it's actually a classi…
The last thing we ever thought we'd be featuring on these pages is a a Virgin Mary softie , or an eco-friendly one at that, created by hand from eco-fi felt made completely from recycled water bottles. But the way we see it, some pewter …
The Yo! Gabba Gabba infatuation has reached a fevered pitch in my household, as my 19 month-old can now say "DJ Lance Rock" better than she can say Grandma. Which is no slight to Grandma. In fact, Grandma was cool enough to devote the be…
I wrestle with the idea of what to get my two-month old daughter for Christmas, because well, she's two-months and what the heck does she care about what's sitting under the tree for her, right? But then I have to wonder if it'll come ba…
My kids are always playing "laboratory," where they collaborate on a grand experiment--real or imagined--resulting in one or both of them shrieking, "It's aliiiiiiiive!" Never let it be said that we lack imagination around here. So when …
The picture that comes to mind when I hear "doll" and "completely recycled materials" together in one sentence has never quite looked like the spectacular looking Binky Buddies recycled dolls from Hasenpfeffer Incorporated . Using a vari…