Spotted! Arabella Miller Flutterbye Kid's T-shirt!

I got a fab surprise the other day when I visited Chelltune - the specialist website for all things baby signing.

Chell, Director of Chelltune, won an Arabella Miller Flutterbye T-shirt in a competition a few weeks ago, and here is her daughter Anya modelling the prize!

Chell also made a lovely comment about the t-shirt:

'I must admit that because the t-shirt is white I was reluctant to put it on my daughter; I didn’t want it to get ruined. She has worn it a few times now and I’m really impressed with the quality. The first time it was worn Anya managed to cover it in food (nothing unusual there then!). Despite being scrubbed then machine washed the t-shirt came out looking immaculate, I was surprised as many of her cheaper t-shirts from the High Street just haven’t washed well at all."

In the picture on the right Anya is signing "butterfly" which is pretty cool.

Chelltune offers a range of practical products using British Sign Language (BSL) or Makaton to help you and your little ones sign together.

This includes the Let’s Sign range, including posters, flashcards, ebooks and reward charts. They also stock products that are useful if you attend classes such as Tinytalk, Sing and Sign or Sign with your Baby or teach your infant at home yourself.

I was particularly taken with the cute finger puppets, figurative/signing puppets, teaching mitts and glove puppets.

How to Make a Bug Hotel

Arabella Miller is a proud supporter of Buglife, here's a great Autumn project which kids will love (and so will bugs!)

As the leaves fall, create a cosy spot for bugs!

As the weather gets colder there’s something you can do to help the bugs in your garden survive the winter. This autumn, why not create your own Bug Hotel?
With just a few pieces of simple equipment and some dead leaves, you can provide a safe, dry place for bugs such as ladybirds, lacewings, ground beetles and even bumblebees in your garden.

Bugs love untidy gardens! Piles of dead wood and leaves lying around the place are a source of food to some bugs and provide shelter for others. For many bugs a heap of autumn leaves is the ideal place to hibernate through the winter. This autumn, why not make a bug hotel out of a 'tidy' leaf pile? This is a great activity for children – they’ll enjoy gathering the sticks and leaves and helping an adult to make a cosy home for bugs!

All you need is:
Plastic mesh or chicken-wire
Sticks such as long twigs or dead plant stems
Garden string/wire
A flat piece of wood
A pile of dead leaves

HOW TO MAKE IT

Make a tube: Most garden centres sell chicken-wire or plastic mesh by the metre. For our bug hotel we bought a one metre length of green plastic mesh, curled it into a tube and tied it in place using four twists of plastic covered garden wire.
Put sticks through the tube at the bottom: take some dead plant stems or twigs and poke them through the sides of the cylinder at the bottom. The twigs overlap to form a mesh which stops the leaves falling out of the bottom if you pick it up; it also stops the leaves touching the ground and helps to stop them getting damp.
Fill the tube: with the twigs in place you can fill the cylinder with dead leaves
Give it a lid: put a piece of wood on top to stop the rain getting in (the wood has to be heavy so it won't blow away).
Top it up: as the leaves in the hotel dry-out they will shrink, so try to keep some extra ones to top-up the tube.
Secure it: if your garden is very windy it might be an idea to make some v-shaped staples out of coat-hanger wire and use them to pin the bottom of the cylinder to the ground.
Once you have made your hotel put it in a quiet corner of the garden - preferably somewhere in the shade. As the nights start getting colder, bugs will find your hotel and use it as a safe dry place to hibernate.

If you want to find out more about how you can help conserve the small things that run the world, visit Buglife or call us on 01733 201 210

New Organic Baby Clothes

Our new funky baby clothes are now in stock, including organic rompers, dresses, long sleeve tops, sleepwear and baby trousers. You can see some of them on the video below.

Win prizes as a newsletter subscriber

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Baby Boys Clothes at Arabella Miller

Before I launched Arabella Miller I spent time asking other mums what they liked/disliked about baby boutiques.

Mums with boys told me they had a real problem finding designer baby clothing which had boys baby clothes that they would actually like their baby to wear!

Common comments were concerned with dull colours, motifs that were either too babyish or too grown up!

So when I started to design infant boy clothing, I decided to take the cue from our most popular t-shirt print Close Encounters and adapt it to make some cute baby clothes especially for baby boys.