A couple of weeks ago my friends at The Land of Nod asked me if I’d like to pick a few of their Christmas toys to review and give away. (Did I tell you that when we were in Chicago for Ry’s marathon we actually got to visit the Land of Nod headquarters and play in their playground office? It was seriously the field trip of a lifetime!)
Anyway, um, yeah! They only have my absolutely favorite toy catalogue in the entire world! (and I’m seriously not getting paid to say that.) It’s the one that makes Oliver & Hazel & I cuddle up on the sofa with various marking utensils after the mailman drops it off while we talk about how cool it would be to have a real, kid-sized guitar or an entire play kitchen made from wood and felt. Dreamy.
So, with Oliver (and with his penchant for robots & fun) in mind this time, I picked three toys. The first? The More the Merrier Nesting Robots. Yep, I’m a total sucker for these kinds of things.
Maybe it’s the repetition, because I spent the better part of a half an hour playing with them and photographing them in different arrangements.
I swear! These really are for Oliver!
Okay, mostly for Oliver. And maybe a little for me, too. He and I have had a blast with them. I was a little surprised that they were plastic and not wooden, but they are so cute and charming on the toy shelves in the playroom; I accept them with open arms!
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m kinda hardcore about keeping things simple in our playroom. We don’t do the billions of toys in buckets thing. We have two large, open cases in there with lovely toys that are easy to see and grab and then put away in their place. Lots of fun imagining to be done, less of the messy heaps of who knows what (does this say anything about my type-A personality? I like a clean playroom, okay?). :)
The second and third things I picked were the same – I just knew Oliver (and Hazel) would love them and that they’d be perfect both at home and on those long holiday car trips we have ahead of us (two trips in the next 5 weeks, for a total of 32 hours on the road. oy vey).
They are kind of like paper dolls, but they’re magnetic and clever and there is lots of extra room for imagination with these. I picked the Time Travel set and the Robots set because the first is fun for changing clothes and the robot set is perfect for getting crazy.
Or, you know, go ahead and get crazy with the sensible set. Sure.
Oliver and I had so much fun with these. We took turns closing our eyes while the other person dressed up our guys in a crazy way.
We seriously had so much fun doing this together.
Then we moved on to the robots. I really liked these because they were designed so well. Nice color palette, interesting options, kinda retro-y. Of the three toys, this was my favorite.
It was fun to think outside the box with these guys and create characters and talk about what they do and how they talk. (And the cookie sheets was a nice way to keep all the pieces in place. Again with the type-A. Ah well.)
I’m so pleased with the treats I picked. I’m definitely looking forward to the magnetic toys in the car – especially because they come in nice metal cases that will serve as mini-cookie sheets.
And now all that’s left is for me to open up this giveaway to you! Do any of y’all have little ones in your life that would love to open these up on Christmas morning? Enter away! One entry is free (and you can do it once per day!), and you can get additional entries by following @thelandofnod on Twitter and “liking” their Facebook page. Just do all your entries right in the rafflecopter widget and only leave a comment if you feel like it! :)
Just wanted to say that I LOVE the giveaway entry form! Very cool and so easy!
Oh, good! I’m glad you like it! It saves me SO much time and effort so it is a big deal to me to get to use it! Glad it’s easier for y’all too!
I was going to say the same. So I will. Love the entry form – SO easy!
Sign me up! I’m lovin’ those toys!
i love it too! but i accidently hit “send” before i entered my “facebook name” on that entry. oops! it’s “cheri meyer spitzer”….just in case you check! :)
I love those robot magnet toys! My 4 yr old son would love them. Also, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE if you did a post about how you organize your playroom, decide what toys to have out, etc. I have a large white IKEA shelf (which I think is what you have too) but mine seems to be overwhelmed with toys to the point where the kids don’t even know what to play with anymore. I would love any advice on how to go about organizing and de-cluttering the playroom. It seems like to matter how hard I try, with 3 sets of grandparents and several aunts and uncles we just keep getting more and more toys that I don’t know what to do with!
I hope I’m not leaving this comment twice…I don’t see it showing up, so maybe I forgot to click post the first time? (I’m a sleep deprived mama of an infant a toddler and a preschooler, these things happen. lol) Anyway….I totally love the robot magnets – my son would LOVE those!
What I really wanted to say/ask is – would you do a post about how you keep your playroom clean/organized sometime? I would LOVE LOVE LOVE some advice here. I really desire to have a neat and orderly playroom where the kids are not overwhelmed by the bins full of random toys. I feel like our playroom has so much in it that they don’t even know what to play with, it often looks like a toystore exploded in there. It’s overwhelming for them. Not to mention how overwhelming it is to clean it all up when we have friends over (we have a bible study at our house every week and there are about 7 kids that play in there and get out everything!) I have a big white IKEA shelf, which is what I think your is, but mine is way overloaded. How do you go about deciding what to put out? I find it hard with 3 sets of grandparents and lots of aunts and uncles who love to buy things for our kids to maintain some sense of order and not be overwhelmed with all the toys. I think I need to do some serious toy purging before christmas…
I’m trying this one more time…If this comment shows up 3 times I’m gonna feel really silly! LOL
I LOVE the robot magnets- my 4 yr old son would love them too!
Would you consider writing a post about your playroom? How you keep it neat and organized? How you decide what toys to put out and how? I am so frustrated with our playroom right now. There is just too much stuff in there – it’s overwhelming for the kids, I think they are so overwhelmed that they don’t even know what to play with. Not to mention how overwhelming it is to clean it up, especially after our weekly bible study when there are 7 kids playing in there (some try to help clean up, but they don’t know where things go either). And it’s hard to not feel overwhelmed with toys with several grandparents and family members often buying them gifts…any ideas on how to combat this? I would LOVE to have a more simplistic, organized playroom that my kids WANT to be in. Any suggestions? I know I need to do a serious toy purge before christmas!
Haha! Megan, it did show up three times! Somehow your comments (and a few others) go into my spam folder (which I check daily) and don’t show up in the comments right away. Weird.
Anyway, yes, I can work on writing about our play room. Thanks for asking! I’ve been meaning to do that for about a year now, but never got around to it. Thanks for the reminder!
ahhh, well… Oops! I’ll remember that next time when I’m being impatient ;) Apparently typing the question 3 different times got it stuck in my head because today we spent nearly 2 hours going through toys and filling up a box to donate and trying to organize our playroom a bit more. Thanks for the inspiration and I can wait to hear some of your tips of how you do it!
How very very cute are the robot magnetic dress ups? Keler (my five year old) has two pirate sets and they’re GREAT for the car- and tidy, oh yes tidy. Thanks for hosting this!
Awesome giveaway entry form. I LOVE the Matryoshka dolls. My kids are adopted from Ukraine and we are adopting again from Russia, so those are really neat!
Oh my goodness!! I won!!!:) So exciting! Now…what do I need to do!;)
…to do!?;) *sigh* Semi-proper punctuation is required! I’m a little excited…can you tell!?
Yay, Becky! Contact me with your mailing address and I will pass it on to those lovely folks at The Land of Nod.